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Nature Studies on the Farm 



SOILS AND PLANTS 



BY 



CHARLES A. KEFFER 

PROFESSOR OF HORTICULTURE AND FORESTRY, UNIVERSITY 
OF TENNESSEE 



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NEW YORK • : • CINCINNATI ■ : • CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooles Received 

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Copyright, 1907, by 
CHARLES A. KEFFER. 



NATURE STUDIES ON THE FARM. 

W. p. 1 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. Introduction . . . , . 

II. Origin of Soils. . . ',.. 

III. Kinds of Soil 

IV. The Plant and the Soil 

V. Little Rivers under the Ground . 

VI. What the Forest does for the Soil 

VII. The Robber Farmer 

VIII. Weeds ...... 

IX. What the Russian Thistle Did 

X. The Plant's Business 

XI. Buds and Seeds .... 

XII. Why do we Plow? .... 

XIII. Give the Crops Plenty to Eat 

XIV. Sowing the Seed .... 
XV. Round and Round the Farm . 

XVI. Stirring the Soil .... 

XVII. The Hoed Crops .... 

XVIII. The Cereals 

XIX. In the Meadow . . . . . 

XX. Two Cousins 

5 



PAGE 

7 
13 
16 
20 
25 
30 
38 
41 
48 

5 1 

57 
62 
68 
74 
78 
82 

87 
92 

95 
102 



XXI. A Blanket Garden 

XXII. Cuttings 

XXIII. Transplanting . 

XXIV. Ror's Garden 
XXV. The Orchard 

XXVI. The Grateful Plants 
Suggestions to Teachers 



TAGE 
I07 

112 

Il6 
I20 
126 
131 
137 



NATURE STUDIES ON THE FARM 



I. INTRODUCTION 

No boy or girl who has always lived in the country 
will need to be introduced to plants, as though they 
were strangers ; but I want you not only to be ac- 
quainted with corn and cotton, with fruits and 
flowers, but also to know the way in which they 
grow, as well as something of the soil from which 
they get their food, of the roots that secure it, the 
leaves that digest it, and the fruit where the food is 
so largely used. 

And I particularly want ^ou to learn these lessons 
about plants very largely from the plants themselves. 
Therefore this book is to be read and not studied, as 
would be the case were it a geography or a spelling 
book. I can tell you in the book a few things that 
it is well to know, but the plant can tell you a great 
many more things that are both interesting and use- 
ful. I believe that the potato plant can tell boys 
things that will almost make them enjoy hoeing 
potatoes ! 



This work that we are to begin together is not 
plant study merely, but a study of the growing plant ; 
and our purpose is to learn to help the plants to grow 
better, so that they may give us larger crops. To 
do this we must learn something about soils as well 
as about plants. We shall find that the same law of 
life applies to plants as to animals and to man. 
Like us, the plant grows best when it is fed best. 




Strawberry plant. 

Like us too, the plant is helpless when very young, 
and becomes stronger and better able to take care 
of itself as it grows older. Indeed, fruit trees are so 
much like people that the German gardeners call 
the place where young trees are grown a " tree- 
school," and all the fruit trees have to spend a few 
years there, learning how to grow. 

And here is a question that I want to ask you : 
What are the differences between plants and ani- 
mals? You say in reply, " Animals move from place 
to place, and plants do not." Are you sure plants 
do not move ? Before you decide, please learn all 



you can from the strawberry plant. Then see if 
the Bermuda grass stays in the spot where it is 
planted. Maybe there is a good place for wild ferns 
near your school. Find some " walking " ferns and 
see whether they are not spreading out to new places. 




Bermuda grass. 

Are you quite sure plants do not move ? True, they 
do not run like colts, but neither do snails run, and 
in the nature books you will find stories of the coral 
which never moves, and of the oyster, which spends 
almost all its life in one spot. There are a great 
many plants that move easily. The green plant 
called pond scum moves readily through water, and 
a host of other plants do the same ; and then there 



10 

are all the little plants, so small that we cannot see 
them, which float about in the air like dust. 

You may say, " Animals eat food, and plants do 
not." Let us see about that. We know that plants 




Walking fern. 

grow, because we see them get larger from week to 
week and from year to year ; but they cannot grow 
without food. You may say that they cannot eat 
without mouths ; but every plant has a great many 
mouths covering all its young roots and much of its 
leaf surface, and these mouths are no more curious 
than those of many animals. The plant must have 
its food just as surely as a cow or a horse. 



II 



Plants breathe in a way of their own, and, indeed, 
they do almost everything that animals do. They 
do not hear or talk, but you know there are even 
people who are deaf and dumb ; and plants have 
their own way 
of making their 
wants known. Do 
you know how a 
plant tells that it 
is thirsty? When 
we have gone a 
little farther, per- 
haps we can see 
how a plant says 
that it is hungry. 

I have seen 
plants starve to 
death, and I have 
seen whole fields 
of wheat so nearly 
starved that the 
poor plants only 
grew half as high as well-fed wheat plants grow, and 
many of their stalks were headless. Every plant in 
the field did its very best to make well-filled heads, 
but they were too weak and starved ; so instead of a 
big crop the farmer hardly got five bushels of grain 




Thirsty corn plants. 



12 

to the acre. I wonder whether that farmer starved 
his boys and girls as he did his wheat. Like all 
other good plants the wheat plant gets its food from 
the soil. The dodder and the mistletoe steal their 
food from the plants on which they grow, but they 
are thieves. 

As plants depend on the soil for their food, we 
may well begin our study where the plants begin to 
grow. 



13 



II. ORIGIN OF SOILS 



All of the land is called soil, down to the hard 
rock which lies at a greater or less depth below the 
surface. In some places the soil is very deep ; in 
others it is only a few inches in depth ; while there 
are small spots on the earth's surface where there is 
no soil, but only bare rock. When we speak of soil 
we usually have in mind only the surface layer, 
which is darker-colored, more fertile, and more porous 
than the subsoil. But the deep-lying clays are soil, 
and the pure sands that are found along rivers and 
often in layers under the surface are soils also, and 
have a great influence on the fertility of the land. 

Now, if this were a fairy story, I should begin with 
" Once upon a time," and then tell you how, a great 
many years ago, the whole earth was covered with 
water, and in some way a little strip of soft rock was 
raised here and there above the sea. And the waves 
washed the rock, just as you may see the waves of a 
river wash the shore, and little bits of rock and shells 
were broken loose by the waves and carried by sea 
currents to other places, where they settled, making 
big sand bars, that at last reached the top of the 
water — just as sand bars are formed along our 
creeks and rivers. And as the land was raised higher 
the frosts cracked the rocks, and the lightning broke 



H 



them, and the rains beat upon them, forming streams 
and rivers that washed the loose parts down to lower 
places, grinding the broken stone and mixing it all 
up. When plants grew on the earth they too were 




Sand bar in creek. 

swept down by the water and mixed with the broken 
stone, which became finer and finer until some of 
it was like dust. 

In this fine earth, made of ground rock mixed 
with leaves and twigs, worms and other small animals 
lived, making burrows and still farther mixing the 
earth which the water had ground. Finally all this 
grinding and mixing and moving from one place to 



i5 

another made the rock into soil. Soil-making has 
been going on since the world began, and soils are 
being made to-day just as they were when the world 
was young. 

When it rains again see if you can find any road- 
side stream that is not muddy. Why is not the 
water in it clear ? Make a strong dam across such 
a stream, and when the rain has ceased see what you 
can find in your dam. Then go down to the creek 
and see if the rain has made any changes along the 
creek banks. Has it washed away soil in one place 
and made a little bar in another ? Well, that is soil 
movement and soil-making. 

The next time you dig worms to fish with, please 
search very carefully for the holes the worms have 
made in the soil, and you will be surprised to see 
how many there are, and how they go in all di- 
rections. Then remember how the roots of the 
trees pass through the soil. Every worm hole, and 
every dead root, is a place for water to get through, 
carrying tiny bits of surface soil to the subsoil and 
thus changing it. 

So we see that the soil is changing all the time, 
and I suppose there are almost as many living 
things in the ground as there are above ground, all 
working on the soil, mixing and moving, and thus 
making it over and over again. 



i6 



III. KINDS OF SOIL 



There are three kinds of soil : clay, sand, and 
loam. Clay is very fine soil, with more or less lime 
and decayed plants and animals mixed with it. 
Pure clay is so fine that when moist it can be molded 
into many shapes, and when dry and burned these 
will hold water. This is the way our dishes are 
made. Most clay soils are impure, and do not hold 
water like pure clay. All clay soils hold water much 
better than sand, because the clay is much finer and 
its parts stick closer together. Fine sand holds 
water much better than coarse sand or gravel. 
Water passes readily through sandy soil, and slowly 
through clay soil. If you will make a heap of stones, 
each as large as your fist, and another heap of small 
stones, a third of coarse sand, a fourth of fine sand, 
and a fifth of clay, and then pour water on all 
of them until they are wet through, you will see that 
clay holds water best. The big stones will be per- 
fectly dry long before the clay is dry. This is be- 
cause the clay is made up of very tiny bits, which 
are soft and cling together so that the water cannot 
get away from them, while there are big holes be- 
tween the big stones through which all the water 
soon runs out. The sand is made of very hard bits 
that have sharp edges, and there are also many fine 



17 

holes between the grains of sand, so that the water 
runs through it readily. Thus we see that pure 
clay holds water a long time and pure sand can- 
not hold water. Now, if sand is mixed with clay 
the soil thus made will hold water better than pure 
sand and not so well as pure clay ; for the sharp 
edges of the bits of sand will keep the fine bits of 




Clay, loam, and sand molds (taken from flower pots). 

clay wider apart and thus let the water through. 
A mixture of sand and clay is called loam. 

Very few plants can live in a soil like pure clay 
in which water stands. Water cress and a few 
other plants can do so. And very few plants thrive 
in sand, because it holds so little water. The cac- 
tus is about the only family of plants that likes such 
very dry soil. But almost all plants do well in loam, 
which is not so dry as sand nor so wet as clay. Of 
course there are clay soils which have a little sand 



i8 

in them, and sandy soils which have some clay, so 
that all kinds of mixtures may be found : sandy 
clays, clayey loams, loamy sands, clayey sands, etc. 
In clays the parts of soil are so very fine that they 
pack closely together, and when wet the spaces 
between the little soil flakes are filled with water, 
and such soils contain little, if any, air. In sandy 
soils the grains of sand are of all shapes and sizes, 
so that they do not fit into one another. Such soils 
have many spaces between the grains and when 
they are quite moist, as in loams, the sharp sand 
grains separate the fine clay enough for air space, 
so that loam soils contain more air than clay, though 
less than sand. We shall find after a while that the 
roots of plants must have air to do their work. 

Our plants would have a hard time of it, however, 
if the soils in which they grow contained nothing 
but sand and clay. One might take sand or clay 
and wash it until perfectly clean, then bake it in an 
oven until perfectly dry, and then set plants in it, 
giving them all the boiled water they wanted, yet 
they would not live very long. This shows that 
plants require something more in the soil than clay 
and sand. Think how long the trees and weeds 
and grasses have been covering the land with leaves 
and stems, and how many animals have worked and 
died in the soil. All of their bodies, as well as the 



19 

leaves and stems, decay and become a part of the 
soil. 

The animal and vegetable matter that decays in 
the soil forms one of its most useful parts, called 
humus. In the forest where the trees grow so thick 
that the wind cannot blow the leaves away the humus 
in time becomes a thick layer over the soil. This 
is what makes the ground feel soft as we walk in 
the woods. 

It is the rarest thing to find a soil oi pure sand or 
pure clay, for everywhere there are a great many 
things mixed with the sand or clay. There is al- 
ways some iron and lime and there are other things 
which the plants require for food. That is why we 
seldom see a soil where no plants at all will grow. 







% / 


1 



Young wheat plant. 



20 



IV. THE PLANT AND THE SOIL 

While there are a few plants that 
live in water without being fastened 
to the soil, all the cultivated plants 
are grown in soil. The roots of the 
plant anchor it to its place so that it 
cannot be destroyed by wind. Small 
plants that do not rise high in the 
air are in no danger from wind, and 
yet they often have very large roots. 
The clover, one of the most useful 
of forage plants, often has roots over 
ten feet deep, although it seldom has 
stems over two feet high. So the 
root must have some other use be- 
sides that of holding the plant in 
the soil. 

In the spring, when growth first 
begins, the wheat plant is much 
smaller above ground than below — 
its stem is smaller than its root. It 
will take very careful work and a good 
deal of digging to get all of the roots 
of a strong winter- wheat plant in 
early spring. And if we try to dig 
up all the roots of a wheat plant 



21 

when it is in blossom we shall have to make a big 
hole in the ground. But the wind does not blow 
the wheat plant over ; it sometimes breaks the straw, 
but the root holds the plant in place. Why should 
the wheat plant have such a large root with so many 
branches ? 

If there are any woods near the schoolhouse, let 
us see if we can find a tree that has blown down. 
How deep into the ground do the roots grow? I 
have seen the roots of alfalfa plants go ten feet or 
more into the soil ; and in a very dry knoll in Da- 
kota I once took the trouble to dig out all the roots 
of a box elder tree, the seed of which I had planted 
twelve years before. The tree was little more than 
twelve feet high — it would have grown much 
taller in the same time in Tennessee — and it was 
about ten feet in diameter of crown. A man helped 
me and we were very careful not to cut any root, 
following each one until it was no thicker than a fine 
knitting needle. It took us two weeks to dig up 
the tree in this way. And how far do you think the 
roots had grown ? The deepest branch was traced 
thirteen feet straight down, and the longest we fol- 
lowed twenty-four feet from the collar — the place 
where root and stem join — and it was then only 
three feet below the surface. Most of the roots of 
this tree were within two feet of the surface. If 



22 

we examine even large forest trees that are blown 
down we may observe that they do not send their 
roots very deep, most of the roots being within four 
feet of the surface. Can any one tell why ? 

Is the soil the same color all the way down ? And 
why is there a difference ? I suppose if you and I 



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An uprooted forest tree. 
(Reproduced by permission of the Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.) 

were to use just the right things, we could take 
some of the light-gray-colored subsoil, or some red 
or yellow clay, and we could color them just like 
the surface soil. If we take even a little rotten 



23 

wood from an old log, or some decayed grass and 
weeds and leaves, and break them up fine and mix 
them with the red or gray subsoil, we can change 
its color and also change its water-holding power. 
Let us try it. 

But if instead of leaves we use well-rotted barn- 
yard manure it will not only change the color of the 
soil, but will make it richer and better for the growth 
of plants. We can take soil from a deep hole, like 
that thrown out in digging a well, and if we mix 
enough sand with it so as to make its water-holding 
power like loam, and then add well-rotted manure, 
we can grow plants in it quite as well as if we had 
used surface soil. 

Suppose there were a very hungry boy in this 
school, whose mother, knowing him to be always 
hungry, had put a piece of pie on every tenth fence 
post from the schoolhouse to his home. No doubt 
he would eat the nearest piece first ; but if some 
other boy had eaten all the pie near the school- 
house, or if the first boy were still hungry when he 
reached his home, I dare say he would eat the pie 
he found there also. Just think what a host of plants 
there are, and all hungry for the food the soil con- 
tains. They grow most of their roots in the dark 
surface soil because most of their food is there, but 
they almost always send some roots deep down into 



24 

the subsoil, where there is apt to be more moisture. 
Thus they are better able to stand a famine or a 
drought. 

The roots of plants adhere closely to the bits of 
soil so they can absorb moisture from them. The 
young roots are covered thickly with hairs, which 
grow into the tiny spaces between the soil particles, 
and press close to the soil to get its moisture. But 
the old roots and the tips of the young roots have 
no hairs. If you pull up a very young corn or 
wheat plant the roots will be covered with soil. 
What makes it stick, and why are the root tips 
clean ? 



25 



V. LITTLE RIVERS UNDER THE GROUND 

It rained all day long at the Fruit Farm one day 
last January, and the next morning the sun was 
shining when I started to ride to school. As I 
passed along a hillside road in the woods, the gutter 



at the roadside was full of running water. 



In grad- 




A roadside rivulet after rain. 



ing, the land on the higher side was cut down about 
eighteen inches, and the dirt was thrown to the 
lower side, so as to make the road level ; then a shal- 
low ditch was made on the upper side. As I rode 
along I noticed a great many little streams of water 



26 

gushing out of little holes in the bank that had 
been made in grading. They were like springs, 
and I thought they must come from underground 
rivers. But where did all the water come from that 
was pouring out of the bank ? What made the little 
rivers under the ground ? 

The next day the little rivers were still flowing, 
and the water was as clear as any spring. A few 
days later the rivers were all dry, but I am sure 
after the next rain they will flow again. 

Let us talk about them a few minutes. How 
many branches are there in the crown of a beech 
tree ? The crown of a tree is the part above the 
trunk, no matter how low the limbs may grow. If 
they start at the ground the little tree is all crown. 
And how 7 many branches are there in the root of 
the beech tree? It would be hard to answer either 
of these questions, but every large tree has a great 
many branches both above and below the surface 
of the soil. 

When next we go into the woods I want you to 
find a big tree and try to count the number of dead 
limbs in its crown, and the scars where limbs have 
been. Many limbs, big and little, die every year. 
The crown branches drop off when they die, and 
the root branches decay, leaving a hole where they 
grew. 



2/ 

When the rain falls in the forest it does not pack 
the soil as it does sometimes in fields, for the tree 
tops break the force of the drops, and much of the 
rain water follows down the limbs and trunk to the 
ground. The forest floor is covered with a carpet 




Leaves on the forest floor 



of decaying leaves, which absorbs, the rain water. 
As it sinks into the soil it finds the holes where 
the dead roots once grew, and so instead of running 
off over the surface of the land as would happen on 
a hard road, the rain water in the forest makes little 
underground rivers. 

The water that follows the courses of dead roots 



28 

helps to make the subsoil richer by carrying down 
small parts of the decayed leaves and twigs from the 
surface. The air also passes freely into all the holes 
in the soil, and this is very helpful to the roots of 
plants. 




Forest floor with carpet removed. 

There are other channels for water and air besides 
those where roots once grew. All the animals that 
make burrows in the soil help to form underground 
rivers. The moles, gophers, woodchucks, mice, 
and many other little creatures that are a pest to 
farmer and woodsman help him a little in this way. 
The fish worm makes a great many tiny channels 



2 9 

through which air and water pass freely, and it 
is thus a great worker in deepening the soil and 
making it richer. 

Now, when a forest is all cut away, and the land 
is turned into farms, many of the underground 
rivers become dry, and the rain water runs over the 
surface of the soil, washing it into gullies, unless the 
farmer uses his land very carefully. Since the trees 
are no longer there to put a coat of leaves on the 
ground every year, the farmer should try to sup- 
ply something in the place of leaves. He may plow 
under crops of peas, grass, rye, or weeds — any kind 
of plants that will decay in the soil will help to keep 
open underground rivers. Or he may plow under 
the manure from the stables and feeding lots, and 
thus make the soil richer and keep the little rivers 
flowing at the same time. 



30 



VI. WHAT THE FOREST DOES FOR THE 
SOIL 

Every plant does something to the soil in which 
it grows. It takes something out of the soil and 
gives something back to it. The soil is like a sav- 
ings bank. Some people put in money every week, 
and take out very little ; and the bank takes care 
of the money and adds to it, so that the longer a 
man leaves his money with the banker the more he 
gets. Then, some day he can take out more money 
than he has put in, for the money itself has been 
earning a little all the time, and this little is added 
to the whole amount. Year by year the savings 
increase. If a boy two years old were to begin now 
and put one cent a day in the savings bank until 
he came of age, he would have a hundred dollars, 
provided he drew no money out. 

Now, the forest is all the time taking a little 
store from the soil, but it is every year putting more 
into it than it takes out. All through the long 
summer the roots of the trees are taking water from 
the soil and carrying it up to the leaves. 

The water is never pure, but always contains 
certain things that the plants live upon. If you 
drop a lump of sugar into water, the lump soon dis- 
appears, but the water tastes sweet. The water has 



3i 

taken up the sugar. In the same way, while the 
water is in the ground it takes up certain things 
from the soil which it carries into the plant. We 
think spring water pure, because it is clear, but 
pure spring water contains all the food that plants 
need. 

The trees that grow in the forest where the wind 
cannot blow the leaves away act just like other 
plants — their roots absorb water from the soil, and 
this water contains different things that the trees 
must have for food ; but such very small portions 
are dissolved in the water that it tastes pure to us. 
Spring water contains a great many things, all 
mixed together, and all necessary for the plants. 
Here are some of the things contained in spring 
water that plants must have in their food : oxygen, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, iron, 
chlorine, calcium, magnesium. You need not learn 
these names. They are used here just to show 
you how many different things spring water may 
contain when we think it is perfectly pure. 

The water that enters the plant thus carries food, 
and the plant thrives on it, as we grow by what we 
eat. 

Every year the forest returns to the soil all the 
leaves that grew during the season and a great 
many twigs and limbs that have died from want of 



32 

light. Down in the ground a great many roots also 
die every year. The forest covers the ground so 
densely that the wind cannot blow the fallen leaves 
away, and the shade of the trees keeps the ground 
much more moist than it would be if the trees were 




Section through leaves and surface soil to subsoil. 

wide apart, as in an orchard. So the leaves, twigs, 
and dead limbs lying on the moist soil soon decay, 
and most of the matter they are made of burns up 
and passes into the air. The burning is so very 
slow that there is neither smoke nor flame. We 
are apt to think that there can be no burning unless 
there is fire, but the fact is that the change which 



33 

takes place in the dead leaves that fall from the 
trees is a very slow burning. It takes several years 
for a single crop of leaves to burn in this way ; 
while a fire lighted to the leaves would burn 
throughout the forest in a very few hours. But 
such rapid burning leaves only ashes, and ashes do 
not improve the soil so much as do leaves and twigs 
and fruit, which rot slowly and become mixed with 
the soil itself. We call the decaying wood and 
leaves humus, and it is the best gift the forest can 
make to the soil. It is a good plant food. It holds 
water like a sponge. It lets air into the soil when 
mixed with it. It prevents the rapid drying of the 
soil. All these things are good for the plants that 
the farmer grows, and so the forest helps not only 
the soil but it helps the farmer also. 

It takes a great many years for the humus to form 
on the floor of the forest. Every leaf helps, but 
each leaf is so small that all the leaves that grow in 
fifty years or more are needed to make humus enough 
to improve the soil of a field. 

A farmer can supply as much plant food to the 
soil, in the form of manure, in a single winter as a 
forest might give in fifty years ; but a great many 
farmers do not manure their fields at all. They 
plant crops in the fields year after year, and the crops 
yield less and less, until the soil does not produce 



34 

enough to pay for working it. Then the farmer 
quits and lets nature care for the land. 

What does nature do with an old field? By bad 
work on the part of the farmer the loam has become 
washed away and the clay subsoil shows here and 
there in the field. The crops have taken so much 
of the plant food out of the soil that even the weeds 
do not grow well in it. But hardly any soil is too 
poor for some kind of a weed to live in it, even 
though the growth is poor. 

So the first few years after a field is turned out 
there is a growth of poor weeds, each one of which 
is helping the soil a little. Every weed that grows, 
no matter how bad it may be for our crops, earns its 
right to live by doing what it can to make the soil 
better; and in old fields, where nothing else will 
grow, the weeds are very useful to the owner of the 
land. 

After a while there will appear among the weeds 
a few woody plants, such as greenbrier, and black- 
berry, and sassafras, and each one of these helps to 
make the soil better not only by the fall and decay 
of its own leaves but also by making lodging places 
for the dead weed leaves, so that the wind cannot 
blow them away. 

If we go away for fifteen or twenty years, and then 
return, we shall hardly know the old field, for it will 



36 

be covered over with young trees of many kinds. 
Bine and cedar, tulip and ash, maple and cherry — 
a great many trees will be found in the field, and 
only in a few places can we see the bare soil. Al- 
most everywhere the trees and bushes will cover 
the land, and every one of them will be at work 
making the land better by shedding its yearly crop 




Sapling pines in abandoned field. 

of leaves and twigs. All the time the trees will be 
getting bigger and bigger. In fifty years quite 
good-sized trees will stand in the field, making a 
young forest ; and in a hundred years or more fine 
timber can be cut from the old field, and the land 



37 

will be so rich that it will again produce good 
crops. 

But a hundred years is a long time to wait for the 
forest to enrich our poor soil. The better way is 
not to allow our crops to rob the soil. Let us every 
year put just a little more plant food into the soil 
than the crops take out. Then, if we look carefully 
after a few other things, our fields will never be worn 
out, but will become better year by year. 

In the Middle West, where the forest only bor- 
ders the streams, or where no trees grow, it takes 
much longer for nature to restore fertility to a worn- 
out field because there the ground cover is only 
weeds and grasses, and humus forms very slowly. 



38 



VII. THE ROBBER FARMER 

Once upon a time there was a farmer who be- 
came poorer and poorer until everything he had was 
taken away from him to pay his debts. The crops 
that this farmer grew were all robbers — they took 
things from the soil and put nothing back. It was 
not the fault of the crops, however, but of the farmer ; 
and when at last he lost all his lands the fields were 
not sorry, for the man that got them did not help 
the crops to rob, and they began to get fertile again. 

When the first farmer bought the land it was all 
covered with forests, and the trees had made it rich. 
The first thing he did was to cut all the trees and sell 
them to the lumbermen. When he first plowed the 
land it was full of tree roots, and it had a dark, rich 
color. Part of the farm was level, but part of it was 
very steep. The farmer cleared it all of trees and 
planted corn, which he plowed and hoed. The corn 
grew large and strong, for it had all the food it 
wanted. The forest had greatly enriched the soil 

During the summer, whenever it rained, little 
gullies would form, and the rain water would carry 
the soil away, in places one or two feet wide and 
three or four inches deep. In all the steep parts of 
the field the rich top soil would thus be washed 
away, and neither the corn plants nor the farmer 



39 

were helped by it. Some other farmer, who lived 
clown the slope or along the creek where the soil 
was lodged by the stream, was made richer, and that 
was all. 

All summer long the corn grew and made a fine 
crop. When the corn was ripe in the fall the farmer 
cut all the stalks off close to the ground and shocked 
them. When he had shucked all the ears and put 
them into the corn crib he sold the fodder to a 
neighbor to be fed to the stock during the winter. 
The big field was left all bare ; so the winter rains 
washed the rich top soil down the slopes; but the 
farmer was thinking what a fine crop he had made, 
and he left the land to take care of itself. 

The forest had not treated the land so badly. It 
had taken a great deal of richness from the soil, but 
in the fall, when the frost came, it had covered the 
land all over with leaves. And in the winter many 
dead twigs and branches dropped off the trees, and 
many roots died in the ground. All these dead 
leaves and twigs, branches and roots, the forest gave 
back to the soil. But the corn plant could give 
nothing; since even its leaves and stalks had been 
carried away. 

The poor farmer planted other crops on this field 
— wheat, oats, rye, corn — and every year he took 
all the crop away. In a very few years the field did 



40 

not yield so well as it did at first. The tenth crop 
of corn had only small stalks, and there were al- 
most as many nubbins as good ears. The corn 
plants were anxious to make just as big ears as the 
first crop of corn had produced, but the plant food 
in the soil had been used up or wasted. 

What should you tell this farmer to do ? I 
should tell him to go into the forest and learn the 
lesson it teaches. The plant food in the soil which 
he has carried away in the form of crops must be 
replaced in the form of manures. The forest uses 
leaves and roots and twigs and branches for manure 
for the soil. What should the farmer use ? 



4i 



VIII. WEEDS 

What is a weed ? In one story it was said that if 
the farmer plows under a heavy growth of weeds it 
keeps the little rivers 
in the soil open and 
thus prevents the rain 
from making gullies 
in the fields. When 
weeds are allowed to 
grow high for this 
purpose, they are use- 
ful and may be called 
a kind of crop. In- 
deed, in the northwest, 
where wheat is the 
greatest crop, most 
farmers allow weeds 
to grow in the fields 
instead of wheat, once 
in four or five years, 
on purpose to plow 
under. They call the 
weeds a fallow crop ; 

and by plowing the land when the weeds are in 
bloom they prevent weed growth the next year 
and improve the texture of the soil. 




Corn cockle, a weed of the wheatfield. 



42 




Morning glory, a weed of the meadow. 



Iii Tennessee corn- 
fields one often sees 
a great many morn- 
ing-glory vines, and 
in the morning when 
the flowers are all 
open they are very 
pretty. Is the morn- 
ing-glory a weed ? 
Two years ago I 
Sfrew some bachelor's 
buttons in the gar- 
den, and every visitor 
admired their blue 
flowers. The bache- 
lor's button, like most 
plants, has several 
names. The Ger- 
mans call it the corn 
flower, and some 
people call it ragged 
robin. Last year I 
planted other things 
in that part of the gar- 
den, but the bache- 
lor's buttons had 
sown their own seed 



43 

in the land, and it took a great deal of hoeing to 
get rid of them. Were they weeds ? 

Last year acorn plant came up in the rose garden, 
and the gardener allowed it to stand. It was a weed, 
just as truly as if it had been a purslane or a dog 
fennel or a sour dock. 

When the morning-glory grew in the cornfield it 
was out of place, for the land was intended to pro- 
duce a crop of corn. And when the corn plant 
appeared in the rose garden it was equally out of 
place, for it was the business of the garden to yield 
a crop of roses. 

A weed, then, is a plant that is growing where it 
is not wanted. The dictionary tells us a weed is a 
plant that is useless or troublesome ; and some one 
says a weed is a plant for which man has not found 
a use. Let us think of all these meanings in trying 
to find out what a weed is. 

In a cornfield, the morning-glory is a weed, but it 
is a flower to be cared for if planted where it will shade 
the kitchen window, or the porch where the morn- 
ing's work is done. It seems odd to call the useful 
corn plant a weed, but there are a great many useful 
things that become nuisances when out of place. 

Every plant that comes up in a wheat field except 
the wheat itself is a weed, and the same is true of 
any other plant in any field devoted to a special 



44 



crop. The pastures and meadows are apt to have 
many kinds of weeds, and all of them are much 

safer among the 
grasses than they 
would be if grow- 
ing among corn 
plants. Why ? 

The farmer 
must keep up a 
constant fight with 
the weeds, or they 
will use more of 
the plant food in 
the fields than his 
crop can spare. 
The fields ought 
to be rich enough 
to support the 
crop and have 
something left, 
but it would be 
foolish to give 
what is left to the 
weeds. And if it should happen that weeds 
spring up in spite of the farmer's care, the best 
thing to do with them is to plow them into the 
soil, where by decaying they will help the land ; 




Dock, a weed of the meadows. 



45 

only this should always be done before they go to 
seed. When one plows ripe weeds under one really 
sows a crop that is very hard to overcome. 

Weeds are troublesome not only because they 
take food from the soil but also water. Weeds 
require water just as crops do, and in dry seasons, 
particularly, the weeds should be kept out. 

Some weeds are very aggressive, and if left to 
themselves capture a field or a meadow in a single 
season. But these are usually watched for by the 
farmer, and he seldom lets them get a foothold. I 
suppose that the sneaking kind of weeds that slip in 
among the grasses in the meadow land, or hide 
among the small grain, really cause the most loss, 
for no one realizes how much they are taking from 
the crop. 

When the meadow gets very weedy it must be 
plowed, and corn and other crops that need hoeing 
must be planted in the field. Corn, cotton, tobacco, 
potatoes, and vegetables are good crops to plant oh 
grass land, for the tillage they require is the very 
thing necessary to kill the weeds. 

The weeds could teach us many lessons, but 
usually we are too busy killing them to study them 
very much. If we study their habits we shall dis- 
cover better ways of fighting them. A great many 
farmers who try to kill weeds only succeed in trans- 



46 

planting them. I have seen men wait until the cool 
of the evening to hoe the weeds in their gardens. 
That was easy for the men, but had the weeds been 
cut off just below the surface of the soil after the 
dew had dried in the morning, they would not have 
sprouted again after the next rain. I have also 
seen boys hoeing in weedy gardens, where they 




Ox-eye daisy, a weed of the meadows. 



would cut off the weeds just above the ground, or 
dig them up bodily by making deep gashes into 
the ground. Neither is a good way. In the first 
case buds near the ground are sure to grow, and in 
the second a rain will set the plants to growing 
again. 

The best way to kill weeds by hoeing is to cut 
just far enough below the surface of the soil to cut 
through the root, and then turn the stem base up, so 



47 

that it will wilt quickly. Deep hoeing often leaves 
enough soil attached to the root above the cut to 
enable the plant to grow. Hoe shallow, from one 
half to one inch deep, and hoe every bit of the sur- 
face. This will kill all the weeds, make adust mulch 
on the ground, and save the moisture in the soil for 
the crop. 

No single hoeing will kill all the weeds, for the 
seeds do not all sprout at one time, and we no sooner 
get rid of those that are big to-day than little ones 
grow up which must be hoed next week. 

For field work cultivators with many small teeth 
are the best weed killers, but they can only be used 
to advantage while the weeds are small. The weeds 
in a corn crop should never be allowed to grow 
until they are so big that a double shovel cultivator 
is the only thing that can root them up. The corn- 
field is best cultivated with a spike-tooth harrow 
until the corn is at least four inches high. 

Now, it would be a good thing for us to learn the 
names of all the weeds we can, and make a collec- 
tion of them in three sizes : in babyhood, in flower, 
and in fruit. And let us be sure to get the roots as 
well as the tops. In doing this I think we can find 
out what the business of the weed is. 



48 

IX. WHAT THE RUSSIAN THISTLE DID 

This is the story of a foreigner. There are a 
great many foreigners in our fields, but most of 
them have lived there so long that we can hardly 
tell them from the natives. But this foreigner 
made such a commotion in so short a time that she 
was very much talked about. Most plants (we are 
talking about plants, you know, not about people) 
come into a new country very quietly, and some of 
them slip in hidden among others. That is what 
the thistle did. 

Nobody wanted her. She was not liked in 
Russia, but she was sly, and slipped into the wheat 
fields and hid her seeds among the grain, and so 
got into the grain sacks. Somebody bought a lot 
of Russian wheat to plant in Dakota, and the thistle 
was bought, too, though the buyer did not know it, 
and everybody was sorry when the discovery was 
made. 

Now, the thistle had had a pretty hard time in 
Russia, and she was glad to get away. She took 
her place in the seeder as if she had a right there, 
and she no sooner found herself in the ground than 
she pushed her head above the surface and took a 
look around. It was a fine country. There was 
plenty of moisture and plenty of food, and she 



49 

enjoyed her life very much, growing fast and strong. 
She was modest at first and nobody saw her. 

A great many plants besides wheat grew in the 
fields of Dakota. There was the mustard, which 
had big leaves and bright yellow flowers. In some 
fields there were so many mustard flowers that you 
could not see the wheat — eighty acres of brilliant 
yellow ! And there were the fire weed and the 
cockle, and many others. The farmers on the look- 
out for these might be excused for not seeing a plant 
whose leaves were less than half an inch long, and 
spine-shaped at that, and whose flowers were so 
small that one had to search for them, hidden close 
to the stem in the axils of the leaves. 

So the Russian thistle grew unmolested, and it 
happened that some plants escaped the reaper, and 
they stood quietly until the end of the season, ripen- 
ing their seed. Unlike the mustard, they did not 
hasten to drop their seed and they each produced a 
great many, for almost every leaf hid a flower, and 
every flower produced a seed. But in the fall, when 
the wind began to blow, the thistles were wrenched 
loose, and began rolling over the fields before the 
wind. As they jumped along over the plowed land 
the seeds were jolted out, but the thistle hated to 
part with them, so she did not drop them all at once. 
It took a great many jolts before they were all set 



50 

free, and the wind had carried the thistle several 
miles, so that she sawed her seed over a big stretch 
of country. 

There were few fences in Dakota at that time, 
and it is a level country, so the big, bushy thistles 
rolled for miles and miles,- scattering their seed as 
they went. The next spring the farmers began to 
notice a new weed in their wheatfields, and because 
it had spiny leaves they called it a thistle, and soon, 
when it was learned whence it came, it was given 
the name of Russian thistle. As a matter of fact, 
however, it is not even related to the thistle family, 
but belongs to the pigweeds. And how it spread ! 
In a very few years it became worse than the mus- 
tard, and the State passed a law against it. 

For a few years the farmers were in a panic, and 
then some one discovered that the foreigner could 
not live in a field where the cultivator was kept 
going, and the farmers really owe a vote of thanks 
to the Russian thistle for forcing them to rotate 
hoed crops with small grain. 



5i 

X. THE PLANT'S BUSINESS 

I wonder why it is that so many men treat plants 
as if they were not alive. It seems as if they never 
thought about the life of the plant until they tried 
to kill it. They know that horses, cattle, sheep, and 
pigs are alive, and they give them a group name, 
" live stock." No doubt they think of plants as 
"dead stock." It would be no more foolish than to 
treat the plants as many men do. 

I like to think of plants, as I like to think of boys, 
as always very much alive, every one with business 
to attend to, and each doing his best at the work. 
I think you will agree with me that the peach tree 
and the apple tree have business of their own, and 
when they give us fine crops of fruit we are glad 
they have worked so well. And we are sure that 
the corn plants and the cotton plants have done a 
good summer's work when we gather good crops of 
corn and cotton in the fall. But have not the cockle- 
bur and the ragweed also attended to their business 
during the entire season ? 

Sometimes I think that man believes that all the 
plants were made for him — that the business of 
the plants is to be useful to man. But a great 
many questions rush to my mind. If that is so, 
why does he find so many of them useless ? Why 



52 



does he use them in so few ways ? And so we may 
well study this question : What is the plant's busi- 
ness ? 

The boy that gathers hickory nuts enjoys the 
exercise and likes the nuts. I wonder if it ever 
occurs to him that there are other nut gatherers be- 
sides himself, and 
that the old hickory 
tree thinks more of 
them than of him ? 
When I was a boy 
we used to devote 
a day every year 
to gathering wild 
plums. Father 
and mother and 
all of us children 
would go up the 
river several miles 
in our boats, and 
when the season 
was good we would get all the plums we could use. 
There were wild plum thickets which fruited freely. 
Many plums were too poor to use, but some were 
very fine. We all have gathered luscious black- 
berries in the wood lots and pastures, and along 
the roadside. Was it the business of hickory and 




Blackberry in fruit. 



53 



plum tree and blackberry bush to ripen their fruits 
for us ? 

Away up in the Canada woods where the birch 
tree is so common that men for- 
get its beauty, when early spring 
comes the air is full of tiny seeds 
that come spinning on their 
double wings to the earth ; and 
if the wind catches them it car- 
ries them far from the parent 
tree, and may even land them 
miles away. You may see the 
same thing happen in the pines. 
Then all of you know what 
thistledown is ; and if you have 
not made fairy balls of milk- 
weed seed, all I can say is you 
had better learn how, this very 
summer. I have seen little girls 
ask the head of the dandelion if 
mother wanted them, by blow- 
ing it three times, and if all of its hair was blown 
off in three blows, home they went. Do you sup- 
pose the business of the dandelion is to tell little 
girls when their mothers want them? If not, why 
do their heads have hair, all white and silky, that 
blows away with a breath ? 




Dandelion in fruit. 



54 



Then there are the burdocks and the cockle- 
burs and the beggar's lice. I have gone through 
the woods in the fall and come out with my clothing 

so covered with beg- 
gars lice that it al- 
most seemed as if 
the plants were angry 
with me and had 
made a half hour's 
work necessary in 
order to settle some 
grudge. I wonder if 
the burdock and the 
cockle hate cows ? 
Is it the business of 
beggar's lice and bur- 
dock to bother me 
and the cows ? 
If these are the duties of plants, I must say I like 
the nut trees and the fruiting plants vastly better 
than some others I have mentioned. But in going 
through the mountains one sees thousands of nut 
trees, and very few people, and who does not know 
what vast quantities of berries go to waste every 
year? Are the plants so wasteful as to produce nuts 
and berries that are not used at all ? 

I think we must find some other business for the 




Burdock seed. 



55 



plants than being useful to man. They are useful 
to us in a great many ways, but then, turn about is 




Burdock. 



fair play, and we are useful to such plants as be- 
friend us. Indeed, I have seen cockleburs growing 



56 

in cornfields so happily that it almost made me 
think their best friend was the farmer. 

Besides we have already seen that plants are use- 
ful to the soil as well as to man. The forest im- 
proves the soil by giving to it every year a crop of 
leaves and twigs. And in the prairies and the plains 
the grasses help the soil in much the same way. 
Furthermore the plants are as useful to animals and 
birds as to men. Every animal that eats grass and 
grain and fruit, and every bird that lives on seeds, is 
dependent on the plants for food. 



57 
XI. BUDS AND SEEDS 

If we have all decided what the plant's business 
is we may find out something about the means 
it uses in doing its work. All the plant has to 
think about is how to make more plants of its 
own kind, and it begins working with this end in 
view very early. In order to have as many perfect 
seeds as possible, while it is yet in flower, it does 
what it can to attract insects, which help in making 
its seeds perfect. The insects do a great deal of 
work for the plants, but the plants pay them well. 
They store perfume in their flowers, and what is 
even better, they store honey there, to pay for the 
insects' work. 

But to me the strangest thing the plants do is to 
hang out bright flags — red and white and yellow 
and many other colors — to attract the insects' atten- 
tion. You know the bees and flies have a great 
many eyes, and they can see a long way. One of 
them maybe flying along for exercise, when he spies 
the pink banner of a wild azalea, far across the 
creek. He says to himself, " I did not know Miss 
Azalea was awake yet, but I see her waving a flag, 
and I will go over and visit her." And when he 
reaches the azalea, that lovely flower has a dish of 
the sweetest-smelling honey for him. No wonder 



58 

he is odad to work a little for her. Let us watch 
along the road as we go home and see if we cannot 
find insect visitors among the flowers. The weeds 
are just as good friends of insects as the other plants. 

Now, some plants do not care for the insects. 
They get the breeze to do their work, and they do 
not have to pay him, so they do not take the trouble 
to hang out flags, nor store honey in their flowers. 
All the plants of this kind save the material the 
flags are made of to use in other ways. The wheat, 
corn, grasses, and many of the trees have greenish- 
colored flowers, because they do not need the help 
of insects. But the clover and rape and cotton and 
many vegetables brighten their flowers to call the 
insects. And the wild rose is red and sweet, not 
because we love it, but because it thus lures and 
repays its insect visitors. 

A little while after the flowers fade, a great many 
seeds take their places on the plant. The plants 
have almost as many kinds of seed and seed covers 
as they have flowers. The apple plant covers its 
seed with juicy flesh in a bright red skin, and it 
gives the flesh and skin to you and me for carrying- 
its seeds out of the orchard and dropping them on 
the ground. The wheat plant covers its seeds with 
a strawy chaff that is troublesome to thresh off ; 
and is of no use to us at all ; but the wheat plant 



59 



knows well that men like its seed to make flour 
of, and will be sure to save enough to make more 
wheat plants next year. 

The nut trees know that squirrels and boys will 
carry off most of their seed, but they also know 
that squirrels 
have short mem- 
ories, and for- 
get where they 
have made their 
storehouse. The 
dogwoods feed 
their berries to 
the birds, which 
carry the seed 
away and drop 
it to grow into 
dogwood trees. 

Now I think 
we can see why the beggar's lice and the cockle- 
bur bother men and other animals that pass their 
way. The maple and the elm drop their seeds 
into the stream over which they love to grow, and 
the willow and the poplar give theirs to the wind, 
to carry where it will. 

Have you thought what a lot of work the plants 
give men and birds and beasts and creeks and wind 




Dogwood berries. 



6o 



to do ? Men are not the only planters. I should 
not be surprised if the birds plant more seed than 
the farmers. All the sycamore and willow and 

cottonwood trees 
along our rivers 
were planted by 
the streams, while 
the wind has helped 
to plant the pin- 
eries. 

So you see the 
plants have many 
friends to call up- 
on ; and the reason 
they make them- 
selves useful to us 
is that we, in turn, 
may help them to 
increase in number 
and in size, more than would be possible in their 
wild state. 

Every seed is a little plant that only needs heat 
and moisture and air to help it push up a stem and 
down a root, and there it is, alive and working, like 
its parent plant. And every bud is a little plant 
too, only it gets its moisture through the stem on 
which it grows, and when it pushes, it makes a new 




Beggar's lice. 



6i 

branch instead of a new plant. Many plants in- 
crease in number from stem-buds as readily as from 
seed-buds, and some few have ceased making seed 
growing entirely from stem-buds. The potato, 
sugar cane, and banana form few, if any, seeds. 
The seedless raisin is made from a grape which 
grows only from stem-buds. The tulip and most 
other bulbs form very few seeds, but grow from 
stem-buds. 

So plants have two ways of making new plants — 
by seeds and by buds. Can you mention some farm 
and garden crops that are grown from seed, and 
others from buds ? 



62 



XII. WHY DO WE PLOW? 

Mayhk I ought to ask why we see so many kinds 
of plowing. When I see three big, strong horses 
hitched to a good plow, going along at a brisk walk, 

pulling hard, I 
like to go over 
into the field 
and watch the 
work. And if I 
find a second 
team, stronger 
than the first, 
following in the 
furrow with a 
subsoil plow, I 
am sure that a good beginning is being made 
toward a good crop. But when I see one little 
horse hitched to a little plow, I am just as sure 
that if the crop turns out good it will be not 
because of, but in spite of, the plowing. 

The little plow hardly turns a furrow more than 
three inches deep. The man behind it is not care- 
ful to make his furrows straight and even, and often 
there are little unplowed spaces left. There is very 
little good in this kind of plowing. It leaves the 
top soil almost where it was before, and it does not 




A plow at work. 



63 



loosen the lower soil. The only help it is to the 
farmer is that he gets enough loose earth by that- 
kind of plowing to cover the seed when he puts in 
his crop. 

The man with the big plow and the subsoiler does 
a great deal more than this. His surface plow is 
turning a furrow 
ten inches deep, 
and when the fur- 
row is finished 
the top soil is at 
the bottom of the 
last furrow and 
the earth is 
crumbled loose 
all the way 
through. The 
subsoiler follow- 
ing loosens the earth six inches deeper, without 
moving it from its place. When the field is done, 
the earth has been stirred to a depth of sixteen 
inches, and it is loose, so that the air goes through 
it almost as freely as it passes over its surface. 
Why do we plow? 

I think a little observation just after a rain will 
tell us one reason why. The rain comes down on 
the pike road, the roadside, the meadow, and the 







A subsoil plow. 



64 

field ; the water quickly disappears from the newly 
plowed field, and it takes a long, hard rain to make 
little streams on its surface. The meadow does not 
soak up the rain as fast as the plowed land, but the 



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Poor plowing. 



water does not stand on the surface there as it does 
in the dirt road ; while on a hard pike it takes but 
a very little shower to leave pools of water in the 
ruts. The dirt road has been packed by travel un- 
til it too is very hard. The meadow, with its thin 
covering of grass, has protected the soil from pack- 
ing and baking, but it is not so loose as the plowed 
land, in which, if the work was well done, the earth 



65 

has been crumbled to a depth of ten inches or 
more. 

When well plowed, then, the soil will absorb a 
great deal more rain water, and will allow much less 
to run off in surface streams, than is the case in land 
that is not plowed. Shallow plowing does but little 





*? -, v^Jf 



Plows. 

good, because it does not make a deep enough layer 
of loose soil, and often the soil loosened in shallow 
plowing is carried away by heavy rains. 

In times of drought the land becomes hard as 
well as dry, and does not so readily absorb the rain 
as when it is loose. Deep-plowed land can be kept 
more open than land plowed shallow, and so resists 
droughts better. 



66 

The rain that is absorbed by the surface layer of 
plowed land sinks in the air spaces of the subsoil. 
If the field has been subsoil-plowed the subsoil is 
loose and open, letting the water sink easily into the 
lower depths, where it finds pathways made by dead 
roots and earthworms, and thus it gets deep into the 
ground, and is all saved to the field. 

The best time to plow depends not so much on 
the season of the year as on the condition of the 
soil. If the ground is very dry, as is often the case 
in September, the soil will not crumble when turned, 
but will break into large clods, in which condition 
it will not absorb the rain easily. On the other 
hand, especially in clay soil, if the land is plowed 
when too wet, it will at first be sticky, and when 
dry will be very hard, making it almost impossible 
to fine it down with disks or harrows. Often land 
plowed when too wet remains in bad condition 
throughout the season. The best condition of the 
soil for plowing is when it is dry on the surface and 
fresh below. It will then crumble under the plow, 
and can be perfectly turned, and is easily fined with 
the disk harrow and the spike-tooth harrow. 

Whenever stubble land is to be plowed the sooner 
it can be done after the harvest the better. The 
land should be so well turned that all the stubble is 
covered. This can be done by taking narrow, regu- 



6; 

lar furrows. The summer rains will help rot the 
straw in the ground, and when well-rotted the straw 
turns into manure, like the forest leaves. It adds very 
little to the richness of the land, but makes clay 
easier to work, by keeping the soil particles from 
running together. For the same reason it is a good 
plan to plow under the weeds, grass, cowpeas, or any 
other green crop. 

When through overcropping land has become 
very poor, cowpeas, crimson clover, or other plants 
of a similar nature, are often sown for the special 
purpose of plowing them under as a fertilizer. 



68 



XIII. GIVE THE CROPS PLENTY TO EAT 

Healthy plants are like healthy boys and girls — 
always hungry. And when you have thousands of 
corn plants in one field you may be sure that they 
will need a great deal of food. Feeding a corn 
plant and feeding a boy are two very different 
things, because the plant and the boy do not eat in 
the same way. The boy must have his food pre- 
pared, and he wants it at least three times a day. 
If the farmer had to feed a meal to each corn plant 
three times a day, what a task he would have ! But 
the farmer only places food for his corn crop once 
in the whole year. And sometimes he forgets or 
neglects to do even that, and then the poor corn 
plants have a hard time, and yield only nubbins 
instead of good, big ears. 

We feed our crops when we fertilize the land in 
which they grow. Some farmers use barnyard 
manure to fertilize their fields, and some buy 
fertilizers. When the manure is carefully handled 
it is not only a good plant food, but it improves the 
soil as the forest leaves do, and the green crops that 
are plowed under. When the fertilizers are bought 
it is more important to plow under cover crops than 
when barnyard manure is used. 

The plants need a good many kinds of food, but 



6 9 



there is always plenty of almost all kinds in the 
soil. The three kinds of plant food that must be 
bought are nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. 
These can be bought already mixed, or they can be 
had separately. Barnyard manure contains all of 
them, but if we want to buy nitrogen for plants, we 
get it in the form of nitrate of soda or cotton-seed 
meal. If we 
want phosphoric 
acid, we buy acid 
phosphate or 
ground bone, 
and if we want 
potash, we get 
muriate or sul- 
phate of potash 
or wood ashes. 
There are many 

other fertilizers besides these, which contain more 
or less nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. These 
things are to the plant what meat and bread and 
vegetables are to boys and girls — they are the 
food by which the plants grow. It is not neces- 
sary to remember their names, but we must remem- 
ber that the plant cannot live without them. 

When we want to make our pigs and cattle grow 
well we feed them all they will eat ; and we must 




Sweet potatoes in sacks, showing effect of 
manures. 



70 



have the soil rich in plant food to make the plants 
grow well. The plants take a good deal of their 
food from the air, but we cannot control that — 

there is always 
plenty of the air 
food. 

When we 
plant corn we 
expect a crop of 
grain. The plant 
is just as anxious 
to make a crop 
as we are. The 
plant's business 
in life is to pro- 
duce seeds, and 
scatter them 
widely. Every 
grain of corn is a seed that contains a tiny bud 
and a great deal of stored food for the bud to use 
in growing: until it can make roots and leaves. 
And every bit of the stored food in the seed must 
be taken by the plant from the soil and the air. 
If there is plenty of food the plant will make big, 
plump grains of corn, and full ears ; but if there 
is so little food that the plant is almost starved, 
it cannot do its work of seed-making any more than 




Well-fed corn plants. 



7i 



a starving man could do his work, whatever it 
might be. 

But I can think of plants standing in rich soil and 
starving to death, just as I can think of people 



(kj 





Small plant starved: it grew near a roadside tree. Large plant well fed; 
from center of same field. 

who are sick and cannot eat, though they have 
plenty of food. To use its food, the plant must 
have good roots and good leaves. The plants live 
entirely on liquid diet — they eat nothing but soup ! 
And the soup they eat is water just as it comes in 



72 

the ground, with the things that are dissolved in 
it. 

When the rain is soaked into the soil, it takes up 
all the plant food it can — nitrogen and phosphoric 
acid and potash and a great many other things. 




Well-fed cowpeas. 



But all of them put together are not enough to give 
the water any taste ; it is like pure spring water. 
If there is plenty of fertilizer in the soil, though, 
enough of it will dissolve in the water to feed the 
crops well. 

Now, the soil that is best for plants must contain 
air as well as water. The very best condition is to 
have each grain of soil covered with a film of water, 



73 

and wherever the grains are a little large, the spaces 
between them will be filled with air. In this condi- 
tion the roots grow readily, pushing themselves 
between the soil particles, and using both the air 
and the water in the soil. But in wet soil the air 
spaces have been filled with water, and the roots 




Starved cowpeas. 



cannot work without air. They may thus stand in 
rich soil and starve to death. Whenever a corn- 
field is flooded, the leaves turn yellow, and that is a 
way the plants have of telling us they are starving 
for air at the root. 

So, too, in times of severe drought there may be 
plenty of food, but there is not water enough to take 
it into the plant. 

See how very much like people the plants are ! 



74 



XIV. SOWING THE SEED 

I wonder how many seeds the plants sow every 
year. I am sure that the ox-eye daisy alone sows 
millions and millions ; and when I think of all the 
flowers, and the grasses, and the weeds, and the 
trees, and the farm and garden crops, there must be 
more seed sown every year than there are coins for 
all the money in the world. 

If you could count the seeds that ripen on a 
single radish plant, you would have a big job, for I 
dare say there are hundreds. And if the radish is 
let alone it will sow every seed it has. But it would 
not plant them as the gardener would. The radish 
plant can not plow and harrow and put its seeds in 
a drill ; it must simply drop them from its pods, and 
then leave them for nature to take care of. 

We have found in a previous story what strange 
ways some plants have of getting their seed spread 
abroad. Wheat and corn and the vegetables are 
lucky enough to be very useful to man, and need 
not depend on wind and beasts and water to carry 
their seeds away and plant them. But none of the 
wild plants expect help from man. And so, in order 
that each plant may have at least one of its seeds to 
grow, it sows hundreds in the hope that one may fall 
in a good place and get a chance to live. 



75 

The wild plants sow millions and millions of seeds 
every year, and most of these fail to sprout. Of 
those that grow, very few live to bear seed. This 
spring, on May 6, I found one hundred and seventy- 
three little cherry trees just started from the seed, 
on one square foot of land beneath a wild cherry, 
and there were a great many other plants growing 
with them on that one square foot of land — ox- 
eye daisies, plantains, wild lettuce, several kinds 
of grasses, and other weeds. How many of these 
cherry trees do you think will live to bear fruit ? 

Now, if each of the little seedling plants had been 
given enough room to grow in and plenty of food, 
all might have lived to bear seed. That is good 
farming : to give each plant plenty of food, and the 
right surroundings, and room enough, so that it may 
grow as large and strong as it will. 

Although the plants themselves do not sort their 
seed, we do it for them. Instead of planting every 
grain of wheat, as it comes from the threshing 
machine, we plant only the plumpest grains. The 
big grains contain more stored food than the small 
or shriveled grains, and the little plant in the big 
grain will have the best start, and usually it will 
make more and better seed than the small grains. 

But the little plants, as soon as they come up, 
must have room for their leaves to spread out to 



76 




Wheat — big and little grains. 



the light, and for their roots to grow in. So if we 
sow the seed thick we must soon thin the plants 

by taking part of 
them out. 

Why do we 
transplant toma- 
toes and cab- 
bage, and why 
do we not trans- 
plant wheat and 
oats ? 

Suppose a farmer were to sow five bushels of 
good wheat to the acre, instead of five pecks, which 
is enough for a good crop if the soil is the right 
kind and in good condition. He would use four 
times as much seed. Would he get four times as 
large a yield ? 

When we sow corn for ensilage we drill the seed in 
rows, so the plants stand about six inches apart in 
rows three and one half feet apart ; and the crop is 
a great yield of leaves and stalks, but are there 
many large ears ? 

You see, then, that a great deal depends upon 
getting the right amount of seed for a crop into 
the ground. We must sow the best amount of the 
best seed, at the best time, in the best way. 
What are these four bests for wheat ? 



77 

The plants do not cover their seed with soil, but 
we must do it for them. Many plants try their best 
to cover their seeds with leaves, but the wind blows 
the leaves away and the seeds are left to dry. 

We know that the seed must have moisture to 
sprout, so we cover the seed with soil and pack the 
earth firmly upon it. If the seed is sown too deep, 
the food it contains will not last long enough for the 
little sprout to reach the surface, and it will die. 

I once planted some wheat grains in blotting 
paper and they taught me some things that every 
farmer should know. Ask the teacher to show you 
how to make a blotting paper garden. 

Some farmers sow wheat broadcast and harrow it 
in. Others sow it with a press drill. Which is the 
better way? 

We know that the seed must have air as well as 
moisture in order to sprout. Now, if the land is 
wet, all the spaces in it are filled with water, and so 
we should never plant seed in wet soil. But if the 
land is dust-dry, while it contains plenty of air it has 
not enough moisture for the seed to sprout. So the 
soil should be neither wet nor dry, but just between, 
when we call it fresh. 



78 



XV. ROUND AND ROUND THE FARM 

Let us make a picture of a farm on the black- 
board. In the center we shall mark off five acres 
for home, garden, and feeding lots. Then we shall 
make a line each way from the middle of one side, 
passing through the home lot and reaching to the 
center of the opposite side. We shall thus divide 
the farm into four fields, which we may call A, B, C, 
and D. 

Now I want you to help me drive the crops from 
one field to another in regular order, round and 
round the farm. It does not make any difference 
how we start, but there is a best way of arranging 
our procession. If this year we have small grain 
in A, corn in B, pasture in C, and meadow in D, 
next year there should be meadow in A, small grain 
in B, corn in C, and pasture in D. In the third year 
there should be pasture in A, meadow in B, small 
grain in C, and corn in D. In the fourth year 
there should be corn in A, pasture in B, meadow 
in C, and small grain in D, and this will complete 
the first round. The fifth year the fields should be 
used as they were when the rotation began. 

Just at first, it seems as if it were a good deal of 
trouble to change the crops from field to field every 
year; it would be much less bother to plant corn in 



79 

the same field ten years in succession. And when 
a field is seeded to grass, which grows well for 
several years without being disturbed, why should 
we leave it in grass only two years at a time — the 
first year for hay and the second for pasture ? 

I know two boys whose home life is very different. 
One has meat and bread and butter and potatoes, 
every meal, and nothing else to eat. He gets tired 
of having nothing but meat and bread and butter 
and potatoes, and often his stomach gets out of 
order. He is not a very strong boy, and I am afraid 
it is because of the sameness of his diet. 

The other boy never knows what his next meal is 
to be, for his mother gives him vegetables and fruits 
and eggs, as well as meat and bread and butter and 
potatoes. He does not have any more food than the 
first boy, but there are so many kinds of food that 
he does not tire of it, and he is strong and healthy. 

We do not all relish exactly the same food, nor do 
we use the same amounts of each kind. It is very 
much the same with the plants. It may be that 
the hay crop does not take the same amount of 
nitrogen that the corn crop needs, and when the 
pasture is plowed under it makes the soil quite 
different from what it is when the corn stubble is 
turned, because there is such a mass of grass tops to 
rot in the soil. 



8o 

If instead of grass we use cowpeas for a hay crop, 
while it is true we must sow the seed each year, yet 
they make a very heavy forage crop, and they enrich 
the land merely by growing in it. Neither corn nor 
other hoed crops can do this, but the clovers and 
cowpeas, soja beans, velvet beans, and the pod-bear- 
ing plants generally, take nitrogen from the air as 
well as from the soil. Nitrogen is the most expen- 
sive of all fertilizers ; and where clover or alfalfa or 
cowpeas are grown, all the nitrogen that is stored in 
the stems and roots of the plants at the time the 
land is plowed becomes food for the next crop. 

You will notice that I let corn follow pasture, and 
if the pasture is of clover or peas, the corn will get 
all the nitrogen their roots and stems contained. 
The corn is a very greedy plant and sends its roots 
far and deep in search of food. Clover and alfalfa 
are even deeper-rooted than the corn, and they thus 
prepare the land better for corn than any other 
crops can. In the same way the corn, by its deep 
rooting, puts the soil in good condition for small 
grain. The grasses like a firm seed-bed, and may 
be sown with small grain, growing in the shade of 
the grain crop until it is harvested. So you see there 
are good reasons for deciding the order of the 
plants in the rotation. If potatoes, cotton, or other 
crops that requires cultivating, are to be grown, they 



8i 

should be given a place with corn, and of course all 
kinds of small grain may be grown in the same 
field. 

One of the most helpful things in a rotation is the 
year that the field is in pasture. The animals drop 
manure all over the field, and when the pasture is 
turned under, the manure adds to the fertility of the 
land. By this plan, every field of the farm is fer- 
tilized by a manure which both enriches the land 
and improves its texture. The use of a field for 
pasturage one year in four does not mean that no 
fertilizers will be needed. The small grain crop 
should have a dressing of fertilizer, and if the land 
is poor, a good dressing should be spread on the 
pasture before it is turned under for corn. 

But the lesson to be remembered is that it is best 
for all crops to move from field to field, round and 
round the farm, in regular order; corn, grain, grass, 
pasture, over and over again. 



82 



XVI. STIRRING THE SOIL 

There are a great many boys who believe that the 
only reason why we cultivate the cornfield is to kill 
weeds, and so keep the food that is in the soil for 
the corn plants. 

But I have seen cornfields that were badly in need 
of cultivation in which very few weeds were growing. 
We cultivate, or stir the soil, in many ways, and 
always our chief reason has something to do with 
the moisture of the soil. Sometimes when the land 
is too wet, we stir the soil deeply to help dry it out. 
When it is swampy, it may even be necessary to 
ditch it, or put tile drains under the surface. 

As a rule, however, we stir the soil to help it 
absorb and hold moisture. I have told you that 
plowing, which is one form of stirring the soil, if 
well done, helps the land to absorb a great deal more 
rain water than is taken in by unplowed land. All 
the little open spaces in the plowed land fill up with 
water before any begins to run off the surface. 
Within a short time most of this water seeps into 
the lower soil. The land gradually dries, because 
the air is drier than the soil, and water passes from 
the land into the air exactly as it passes from water. 
If you fill a shallow pan with water and set it in the 
sun, in a few days it will all have disappeared. But 



83 

if you put a board over it, the water will last a long 
time. 

You know that the rain comes from clouds, which 
are made principally of water that has been absorbed 
by the air from the sea. But all the time the air is 
also absorbing water from the land. First the top 




Implements for stirring the soil. 

soil becomes dry, and then in times of drought the 
subsoil to a good depth may lose nearly all its water 
into the air. 

But if you cover fresh soil with a deep layer of 
straw or leaves, it remains damp much longer than 
uncovered soil. And I want you to see, if the road 
is dry when you go home to-night, whether the 
cultivated land in the cornfield is equally dry. 
In some parts of the country, where they have 



84 

plenty of straw, farmers plant their potatoes on the 
surface, or barely cover them, then cover over the 
entire field with straw. The potato tops grow up 
through the straw, which mulches the land, keeping 
it moist, and the potatoes form between the soil and 
the straw. When they are ripe they are perfectly 
clean, and the more easily gathered because they 
are grown on top of the soil instead of under the 
surface. 

But we can not have straw and leaves enough to 
make a good mulch over a big field, so we try to 
make a mulch of the soil itself. We call it a dust 
mulch, and we make it by running a fine-tooth culti- 
vator through the soil to a depth of about two 
inches. This lets the air in, and fines the earth so 
that it dries out quickly, making a dust. 

Many farmers go over their corn and small grain 
two or three times with spike-tooth harrows, or with 
wire-weeders, when the young plants are first up, 
killing a great many weeds, and at the same time 
covering the land with a dust mulch that prevents 
the moisture from getting out into the air. 

I have told you that the soil is made up of a great 
many very small bits, each covered with a thin film 
of water. The dry air absorbs the moisture from 
the topmost soil particles, and then takes the mois- 
ture from the ones below, and very soon the layer of 



85 

soil in which the roots of the corn are growing is 
dried out. Now, if we can put a layer of dust 
between the corn roots and the dry air, it will check 




Making a dust mulch (weeder at work). 



the drying out of the soil exactly as a layer of leaves 
or straw would. 

We cultivate our crops to keep the surface as 
near dust as possible in dry weather. There is a 
great deal more need of cultivating in dry weather, 
for it is then necessary to save all the moisture the 
land contains for the crop. By simply keeping the 
cultivator going, crops have been saved from drought. 



86 

Single and double shovel cultivators are the poorest 
implements that can be used for this work, for they 
ridge the surface, causing it to dry more rapidly 
than a smooth surface, which is formed by using 
wire weeders and spike-tooth cultivators. 

If weeds get a good start in the field, the fine- 
toothed machines are not so good for rooting them 
up as the larger ones, but the regular use of fine- 
toothed cultivators prevents the weeds from getting 
a start and so saves both the food and water the 
weeds would use for the crop. 

Stirring the soil permits the air to pass into it 
freely and thus helps the plants to grow, for the 
roots of plants need air in their work. Changes 
take place in the soil when the air goes through it 
freely, making it richer in plant food. 

So a very large part of the work of the farmer is 
plowing and cultivating and hoeing — stirring the 
soil. 



87 



XVII. THE HOED CROPS 

When you read the title of this story I wonder 
how many of you will know what is meant by hoed 
crops. We hoe cabbage and tomatoes. Do we hoe 
wheat and peas ? Do we hoe the grasses ? The 
gardener and the farmer give different meanings to 
the word hoe. To the gardener it means stirring 
the soil around vegetables. All the boys know 
what a hoe is, and most boys dislike it, for some- 
how the garden always needs hoeing just when 
there are so many other things to be done — pleas- 
ant things, like fishing and hunting and swimming. 

The market gardener uses a wheel-hoe instead of 
a wooden-handled hoe, and by pushing it ahead of 
him he can stir the soil as fast as he can walk. It 
is a splendid machine, and one can do more and 
better work with it among many plants than can be 
done with a common hoe. 

In large market gardens there are horse-hoes, 
cultivators with five, seven, nine, or more teeth, 
which are movable and can be arranged to do deep 
or shallow work. 

Of course more work can be done with the horse- 
hoe than with the wheel-hoe. The next machine 
for hoeing is a farmer's implement, the double culti- 
vator, which straddles a row of corn, is pulled by two 



88 

horses, and has spring teeth, or shovels. With this 
the farmer can hoe several acres in a day. 

So we see that every kind of crop that needs to 
have the soil cultivated while it is growing, is called 
a hoed crop. Corn, cotton, tobacco, and sorghum, as 




A wheel hoe. 



\Y 



ell as beans, peas, melons, onions, radish, and cab- 
bage, are hoed crops. 

There are many things which all kinds of hoed 
crops need alike, and that is why we find ourselves 
talking about corn and cabbage in the same story. 

All the hoed crops do best in land that has been 
well fertilized, well drained, and well plowed. They 



8 9 

all need a great deal more hoeing in the early part 
of the season than later on. When the plants first 
come up in the spring, the soil is not so warm as it 
becomes later; but hoeing the soil lets the air in and 
warms it, and air and warmth make the little plants 
grow faster. Then, as you know, all the weeds have 
sown their seed in the fields before the farmer puts 
in corn or cotton, and it almost always happens that 
the weeds start before the crops do. Hoeing kills 
the weeds, but one cut of the hoe will kill hundreds 
of weeds in April which by June would require a 
sharp stroke each ; and in the meantime the weeds 
would have robbed the crop of a good deal of food. 

By giving the crops a good start, we help them to 
form big roots, which are their food-gatherers, and 
big leaves, where their food is digested. All that 
corn and cotton put into ear and boll is gathered by 
roots and digested in leaves. So the first thing is to 
make them strong. 

After the plants have reached full size, no hoeing 
is done. Maybe you think the farmer lays by his 
corn because it is too big to cultivate, but that is not 
the reason; for he might make the rows farther apart, 
and then he could plow until the corn is ripe. The 
real reason is because it is time for the corn to stop 
growing so fast and begin to form ears. The corn 
seems to like to grow just as tall as it can. In Okla- 



9° 

homa, for example, it grows twelve feet high, while 
in Minnesota, where the summer is much shorter, 
and all the nights are cool, it seldom gets more than 
eight feet high. But after all, what the farmer 
wants is well-filled ears, and not a long stalk. So 
the sooner he can get his corn to turn its attention 
to making seed, the better. 

It is much the same with the other crops. Get 
them to grow well and strong during the first part 
of the season, and they will make more and better 
seeds afterward. The sweet potato sometimes makes 
such a great top growth that it seems to forget to 
thicken up its roots, and the farmers say it " runs all 
to top." When this happens, it is a good plan to 
twist the stems just above the ground until the juice 
starts from them. This will remind them of their 
work, and they will begin making potatoes instead of 
long stems. 

You know, when the tobacco plant is in bud or 
flower, the entire flower cluster is cut off, so that the 
food which would go into the seed passes largely into 
the leaf, making it more perfect. But before the 
sweet potatoes are twisted, or the tobacco is topped, 
while the plants are still young, they are hoed often 
and thoroughly, and made to grow well. When their 
roots and leaves are well formed, and flowering be- 
gins, the hoeing is stopped so as to check stem 



9i 

growth, for this always results in making more and 
better seed. 

I used to have a teacher who told us that when 
the plants were in flower anything that checked 
their growth made them fear that they might die, 
so they hurried all they could with their work. Do 
you remember what the plant's business is ? 

Hoeing makes the plants grow better, by warming 
the soil, saving the moisture in the soil, letting air 
into the soil for the roots, and killing the robber 
weeds. 

All the crops that pay better for the extra work of 
hoeing are called hoed crops. All the work that is 
done on the soil after the crops are up is some form 
of hoeing. 



92 

XVIII. THE CEREALS 

The small grains — wheat, oats, rye, and barley — 
are called cereals, and they grow so much alike that 
we can treat them in the same way. In the 
Southern and Eastern states wheat is planted in 
the fall, and the crop is harvested the following 
summer, but in the north-west all the seed is 
sown in the spring, and the harvest is in August. 

The cultivation of the cereals is best done before 
the seed is sown. That may seem strange to you, 
but let us think about it a minute. 

Wheat and oats cover the ground so closely, even 
when sown with a press drill, that if we used a culti- 
vator in the wheatfield, we would tear up at least two 
thirds of the plants, and that would never do. In 
Germany they sometimes sow wheat in drills wide 
enough apart to allow hoeing by hand, but the work 
is done by old women who get very little pay. If 
we were to sow wheat in wide drills, there would be 
danger of its being blown down by the wind. If it 
grew well, each plant would yield more grain than 
under our present method, but the whole field would 
give little, if any, more, and the cost of cultivation 
would be much greater. 

As we grow them, the cereals come up so thick 
that they smother out a good many weeds, but the 



93 

farmer must try to get all the weeds killed before 
he sows the grain. If plowing is done early, a great 
many weeds will sprout soon after the land is plowed ; 
and if the land can.be harrowed twice before the 
seed is drilled in, a host of weeds will be killed. 

The cereals like a firm seed bed. If the land is 
dry when plowed, it will need disking and rolling 
and harrowing to make it fine and firm for the seed. 
If the land has been in corn or an ensilage crop, 
which has been given clean cultivation, the farmer 
sometimes disks the field without plowing and then 
drills in the seed. In this way he gets a firm seed 
bed, and if the land is rich and clean this is a good 
plan. One advantage of sowing small grain on 
corn land is that the cultivation necessary to make 
a good corn crop has killed the weeds, so that much 
of the work for the grain crop is done while the corn 
is growing. 

All the old picture books show us a picture of the 
farmer with a sack of seed slung from his shoulder, 
walking across a plowed field, sowing the seed by 
hand. But a much better way is to plant with a 
press drill, which sows the seed in regular rows and 
presses the soil firmly upon it, so that it will sprout 
quickly and from the first make a good growth. 
Broadcast sowing must be covered with a harrow, 
which neither covers the seed evenly nor firmly 



94 

presses the soil upon it. The drill is made so 
that fertilizers can be sown with the grain. Grass 
or clover can also be sown, and the machine meas- 
ures exactly the amount of seed that is sown per 
acre. 

Often the small grain is harrowed and rolled after 
it is up, but when the plants have tillered, nothing 
more can be done for them ; the last harrowing is 
the last hoeing they will get. During the winter, 
the small grains may be grazed lightly without harm, 
and rye is often sown purposely for winter pasture. 

In the spring, especially if frost has raised the 
plants, a good rolling will help them, and thereafter 
the field must be left until harvest time. 

The farmer can not control the weather, and 
much of his success with cereals depends upon the 
moisture content of the soil and the weather. But 
there are things which he can do that will help to 
make a good yield. He can run his seed wheat 
through sieves that will separate the large from the 
small grains, and use only the large grains for plant- 
ing. He can soak the seed grain in blue vitriol for 
a short time, then spread it to dry, before sowing, 
and thus prevent smut in the crop. He can sow 
late rather than early, and thus lessen the danger 
from the Hessian fly. He can enrich the soil, and 
have it in perfect condition at the time of seeding. 



95 



XIX. IN THE MEADOW 

There was once a grass plant that found itself in 
the midst of a meadow, and it thought it would like 
to know all about its neighbors. They were a very 
quiet company 
and the grass 
plant had no help 
from them. In 
fact, it seemed as 
if every plant in 
that field was 
doing its very 
best to crowd 
the other plants. 
Our plant was 
of the Orchard- 
Grass family, 
and when it first 
peeped out from 

the soil it had plenty of room. True, there were a 
host of other little grasses there, but they were all 
so tiny that nobody was crowded. 

They were happy too. Big stems of wheat 
towered above them, and they liked the cool spring- 
time. As May passed, the shade of the wheat plants 
was very pleasant, for some days were too warm for 



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Orchard-Grass. 



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the grasses. But one day in June a noisy monster 
swept over the little grasses, carrying with it the 

forest of wheat. Only 
the stubble remained, 
and it made hardly any 
shade. 

But our little grass 
was strong enough by 
this time to stand the 
full sun, and it grew 
faster than before. 
When it first came up 
it showed a single erect 
stem, that soon bore a 
straight, narrow leaf. 
But after a few months, 
it began to send out 
little side shoots, and 
before long the Or- 
chard-Grass found it- 
self rubbing against 
another grass plant. 
Then it began to think 
of its neighbor. 
All the other grass plants had been doing the 
same thing, though most of them did not grow as 
fast as the Orchard-Grass. The Timothy was a 




97 



strong youngster, but the Red-Top was very delicate 
and had hardly thought of branching when it found 
itself in the way of the Orchard-Grass. The Tall 
Meadow Oat-Grass and the Italian Rye-Grass were 
there, but they did not hap- 
pen to be near our friend. 
And a little Fescue that 
had slipped in without being 
caught waited breathlessly 
to see if the others were 
going to put it out of the 
field. 

The Orchard-Grass did 
not stop growing while it 
was thinking of its neigh- 
bors. It was almost the 
strongest plant in the field, 
and it pushed a shoot right 
over the Red-Top, which 
had to bend its back so long 
that it became a cripple for 
the rest of its life. The 
Timothy on the other side 
was more stubborn and it 

pushed its own shoots among those of the Orchard- 
Grass until they were pretty well mixed up. 

The Orchard-Grass was quietly watching the 
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Red-Top. 



struggle for room that was going on among several 
other grasses near by, which became so mixed up 
that the farmer himself could not tell which was 
which. Here and there in the field a Red Clover 
grew. It had a deep, strong root that helped it 




Meadow grasses. 

greatly, so that it was not afraid of being overrun 
by any of the grasses. 

As week after week passed, the grasses crowded 
each other more and more, and soon their stems 
were so laced that hardly a plant was growing free. 
Of course none of the plants grew as strong as they 
would have grown with plenty of room — even the 



99 

Orchard-Grass sent up finer flower stalks than it 
would have produced if it could have had ail the 
room it wanted. But the farmer was rather glad 
when he saw his whole meadow so well covered 
that not a bit of soil could be seen. He knew 
very well that snug neighbors meant finer hay, 
with less wood in the grass stems, and that is 
just the kind of hay his horses and cattle like the 
best. 

When the grasses were strong enough they all 
began to shoot up their flower stalks, and the 
meadow was a beautiful sight, for it was a carpet of 
many shades of green. And the Orchard-Grass, 
lifting its stems highest of all, admired the rest 
almost as much as itself. But its feet were very 
much crowded. It tried to push its neighbors aside, 
but they only bent a little and kept on growing. 
And the whole meadow was at its very best. 

Just when all the plants were telling themselves 
how beautiful they were, a fearful shudder went 
through them all, for they heard that awful noise 
that as very young plants they remembered in the 
wheat. The tall Orchard-Grass looked over its 
lower neighbors and saw a big, clattering machine, 
drawn by tw r o beasts which nipped at the highest 
grasses as they passed. And as the thing moved, 
all the green stalks went down beneath it, and 

LOFC. 



101 

beyond, the field was even cleaner than it was when 
the wheat was removed. Nearer and nearer came 
the monster, and soon it was upon them. The 
Orchard-Grass trembled to its very roots, and then 
a terrible thing happened — the Orchard-Grass 
was beheaded by one of the beasts, and the next 
instant it was cut to the ground by the machine. 

Who will tell the story of what became of the 
grasses after the machine had cut them all ? 



102 



XX. TWO COUSINS 



There were two cousins, each having a very good 
opinion of the way in which she stored her food. 
The name of one was Purple Turnip, and the other 




' Miss Early Cabbage." 



was called Early Cabbage. Both belonged to the 
Brassica family, very worthy people, though not so 
well-born as the Rose family. 



103 



It happened that the two cousins found them- 
selves opposite each other in the school garden, and 
as the days passed, each spent a great deal of time 




Miss Purple Turnip 



in talking to herself about her way of growing. 
Purple never so much as looked at Early, and 
Early saw nothing but the soil and the sky, but 



104 

sometimes people talk so much and so loud that 
everybody hears what is said. That is how I 
happened to hear the two cousins. 

Miss Early was very proud of her big leaves. 
She spread them out to the sun, taking care to 
arrange them so that as much as possible of each 
leaf should be in the full sunshine. For several 
weeks she insisted on showing her big leaves, and 
the more the gardener hoed, the more she spread 
them out, until she touched her neighbors in the 
row. In about two months, however, she seemed to 
change her plan. Instead of spreading out her 
leaves, she kept them hidden away in a bud. While 
the leaves were big, one could hardly see the little 
bud in the midst of them, but when the great leaves 
stopped growing, the little bud became larger and 
larger until it stopped looking like a bud and looked 
more and more like a cabbage head. 

Miss Purple could not boast of big leaves like 
Miss Early, and, indeed, she was a much more 
modest person. She did nothing to attract atten- 
tion. At first she spread her leaves flat on the 
ground, and later she lifted them larger and stronger, 
so that the sunshine could touch them on both 
sides. When her leaves were full grown, she did 
not change her manner of life, so far as I could see. 
She did not get a big head, like her cousin, Miss 



105 

Early Cabbage. And neither did she send up 
a flower stalk, as did another cousin of hers, 
Miss White Mustard. She seemed to be resting. 
I began to think she was getting lazy, when the 
gardener came and pulled her neighbor up, and then 
I saw that she had been making a big round root 
under the ground, while her cousin was making a 
head. All the while, each cousin had been telling 
herself how much better her way of growing was 
than any other. 

I wanted to see what Miss Purple Turnip would 
do with her round root and what Miss Early Cab- 
bage would do with her big head, so I watched them 
through the summer. Miss Early's head grew so 
big that it could grow no bigger, then it seemed to 
rest awhile, and then one morning — it cracked ! 

And Miss Purple simply sat there, and did not 
change at all for several weeks. 

In a week or two after the cracking of Miss 
Early's head, I was surprised to see that she had be- 
gun to grow again, and it seemed to me that her 
growth was even faster than w r hen her big leaves 
were forming. Out of her head came a tall stalk, 
that branched freely, and soon was covered with 
buds, and directly Miss Early was wearing a flowered 
gown ! 

And Miss Purple, after her rest, also pushed up a 



io6 

flower stalk, and when she put on her flowered 
gown, it was so much like her cousin's that you 
might have thought they were cut from the same 
piece of cloth, except that one was a dull pink and 
the other a yellow. 

And after they had admired themselves awhile, 
and had a good many visitors, they laid aside their 
flowered frocks, and in a few days the seed pods 
came where the flowers had been ; and soon the seed 
was ripe. 

But by the time the cousins were covered with 
seed pods a great change had come to head and 
root. In fact, Miss Early Cabbage's head had en- 
tirely disappeared, and the round root of Miss 
Purple Turnip was almost hollow. When I cut 
Miss Cabbage down, I saw that her stem was hollow 
too. Now, you all know how good to eat the 
" heart " of a cabbage head is ! 

What had become of Miss Cabbage's head, and 
where had the good part of Miss Turnip's round 
root gone ? 



io7 



XXL A BLANKET GARDEN 

Yes, a tiny little garden, no bigger than a blanket, 
and you would hardly believe how many things grew 
in it, nor how much better they tasted than the 
things that came from the big garden, where plow- 
ing and hoeing and all manner of hard work were 



necessary 



You must know that our blanket garden was more 




A hotbed. 



like a playhouse than a place for hard work. We 
made it in January and ate radishes from it in Feb- 
ruary, and about the time for sowing beet seed in the 
big garden we were eating lettuce that grew in the 
blanket garden. The market gardener would have 
called it a hotbed, but to me it was more like a 
blanket garden, where the plants were kept cozy 



io8 

and warm, as we are in the cold winter nights by 
nice wool blankets. 

In the first place, we dug an oblong space six 
feet wide, twelve feet long, and eighteen inches deep. 
It was on the south side of a big barn, where 
cold winds could not reach it, and where- it was 
warm in the sun, even on cold days. Then we 
made a wall of posts and boards, fitting close to 
the sides of our garden. The back wall, toward the 
barn, was three feet high, eighteen inches above the 
surface of the ground ; and the front wall was thirty 
inches high, twelve inches above the surface. A piece 
of two by four joist was set in from back to front 
every three feet, and the ends of the frame were 
beveled so as to make an even slant from the back 
to the front. 

During the winter, manure from the horse stalls 
had been saved, and turned several times, so that 
when the frame was made, enough hot manure had 
been saved to fill it. The manure was turned 
frequently to keep it from burning, and to save the 
heat, so that it would last until spring in the garden 
frame. Each time it was turned, it was shaken 
apart, so as to let in plenty of air. The bedding was 
left mixed with the manure. 

When the frame was ready, a layer of manure 
nine inches deep was put in the bottom, and tramped, 



109 

then another layer was added, and so on until it was 
eighteen or twenty inches deep, tramped firmly. 
Then four inches of rich garden loam, containing 
enough sand to make it drain well, was spread 
evenly over the manure, and we put the blanket on. 

And what do you think the blanket was made of? 
Not wool, but glass. We had the lumber dealer 
order us four hotbed sash, each three by six feet, 
with three rows of glass, the panes ten by twelve 
inches ; the sash rested close on the joists we had 
put from front to rear of our frame, and so our 
blanket garden was finished. 

In a few days, the manure in the frame began 
heating, and for a day or two the soil next it was 
very warm to the touch ; but this high heat was 
soon gone, and then the garden was ready for plant- 
ing. 

We had grown some Boston Market lettuce 
plants in a box in the kitchen window, and they 
were about two inches high when the garden was 
ready. These we planted first, setting them six in- 
ches apart in rows nine inches apart. Half way be- 
tween the lettuce rows we planted Twenty-Day 
Forcing radish, putting the seed one inch apart 
and half an inch deep. We planted two sashes 
of lettuce, but only one sash of radish. Between 
the lettuce plants under the other sash we sowed 



no 



Crosby's Egyptian beet. We sowed four rows of 
Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, two rows of White 
Plume celery, and two rows of Earliana tomato. 
These seed were sown quite thick in the rows, 
four inches apart. One sash was left vacant, and 
when the tomato and celery plants showed their 
fourth leaf they were transplanted two inches apart 
so as to have a big start by the time warm weather 
should come. 

The heat from the manure warmed the soil like 
the May sun, and the glass kept the heat in the 
frame. We watered the soil with a sprinkler, and on 
every bright day we raised the sash to admit fresh 
air, and so the little seedlings found themselves even 
better off than they would have been in the open 
ground in spring. 

And they needed more attention than a spring 
garden, but you see the whole blanket garden was 
so small that it was like play to weed it and water 
it and air it, and it was very interesting to see the 
plants grow. Almost before the lettuce plants be- 
gan to thrive the radishes were ready for use. The 
radish is a cousin of Miss Turnip and has the same 
habit of storing food in its root, to use later in seed 
making. 

By the time the radishes were used, the lettuce plants 
had grown so as almost to touch, and in March they 



had formed heads, the inner leaves of which were 
cream-colored, and so good ! When the lettuce 
was cut, its place was given to flower seeds, and 
when the flowering plants were sent into the garden, 
sweet potatoes were set in the blanket garden and 
their sprouts were ready for planting in June, to 
make a late crop. So we had radishes and lettuce 
from the frames before spring came, then we got an 
early start for our flowers, and finally grew sweet po- 
tato plants. Of course the cabbage and celery and 
tomato plants were planted out when the weather 
was warm enough, so our blanket garden was a 
great help, and paid better for the amount of space 
given it than anything else on the farm. 



XXII. CUTTINGS 

It has been quite a while since we had our lesson 
on seeds and buds, and almost all of the crops we 
have talked about since are grown from seeds. To- 
day we shall talk about stem buds and how to grow 
plants from them. The potato, grape, rose, black- 
berry, geranium, and many other plants are com- 





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A rooted cutting of hydrangea. 

monly grown from cuttings of wood or root that 
have one or more buds. Perhaps you have thought 
that only hard plants, like trees, have wood in their 
stems; but the little threads that run through the 
leaves of plantain and through corn stalks are all 
wood, and every geranium stem has a ring of wood 



H3 

around its pith. Some time when you have them 
handy I want you to compare the stem of a gera- 
nium plant with a long shoot from a peach tree, 
looking carefully at each from the tip to the base 
of the stem. 

All along the stems I have spoken of there are 
buds ; and if we were only skillful enough and could 
give it just the right amount of heat and moisture 
we could grow a plant from every well-grown bud 
that forms. You may remember that there is a bud 
in every seed. It feeds on a supply of food stored 
in the seed until leaves and roots are formed. There 
is a similar store of food in all stems, enough for 
each bud that sprouts until it grows leaves and can 
digest its own food. This is why all other plants 
that live more than one season are able to push 
forth leaves in the spring. The buds are nourished 
on food stored in the stem the summer before. 

If a stem, bearing a few buds, is cut from a grape- 
vine in winter, and is planted at once in fresh soil or 
sand, growth will begin at the approach of summer. 
The buds will swell exactly as if the cuttings had 
not been removed from the parent plant. Soon buds 
will sprout, and while little leaves will form on the 
new growth, little roots are forming in the soil. By 
fall the young vine will be three feet long or more, 
and ready for planting in the vineyard. 



114 



In the same way, many flowering shrubs can be 
grown. Such flowering plants as geranium, carna- 
tion, heliotrope, the begonias, and fuchsias are grown 
from cuttings of new wood. 
Very soft, rapid-growing shoots 
are not so good for cuttings as 
firmer shoots, but hard wood 
should not be used. 

The best way to make cut- 
tings is to cut the base just 
below a bud, and have at least 
one joint, making the top cut 
half an inch above a bud. The 
cutting should be from one to 
two inches long, and the end of 
the shoot makes the best cut- 
ting, if it is not too short. Not 
more than two full-grown leaves 
should be left on the cutting. 
If the leaves are very large, the 
outer half of each can be cut 
away. This is often done with 
coleus plants. Plant them in a box of sand, placing 
them one inch apart in rows two inches apart, set- 
ting them not more than one inch deep. 

Some cuttings root in ten days, and others require 
several weeks. The kinds named above take from 




A root cutting of horse 
radish. 



n5 

two to four weeks to root, depending on the heat. 
The cuttings can be taken from the sand without 
injury, provided it is moist. When they are rooted, 
they are planted in a rich, sandy soil, in pots, cans, 
or boxes ; or if left in the sand until strong roots 
are formed they can be planted at once in the 
garden. 

Some plants, like blackberry and horse radish, 
grow readily from root cuttings, the young shoots 
pushing up exactly as though seed had been planted. 
The Irish potato tuber is a short, thickened stem 
that grows underground. Its eyes are buds, and it 
is these which form the new plants when we grow 
potatoes. The sweet potato plants are shoots 
from the roots which are bedded down in the spring. 
How do we grow strawberries, black raspberries, and 
red raspberries ? 



n6 



XXIII. TRANSPLANTING 

If ever you visit a greenhouse, you will see a 
great many plants in very small pots, and even the 
largest plants will be growing in much less space 
than they would have occupied in open ground. 

The florist moves 
his plants from pot 
to pot, each time 
giving the flower a 
pot only one size 
larger than it had 
before. It would 
be much simpler 
and a great saving 
of work to set the 
cutting, as soon as 
it had rooted, into 
a big pot, where it 
could grow a long 
time before it 
would need more 
room. 




Chrysanthemums as transplanted. 



But the most interesting place is the evergreen 
nursery. You know they have nurseries for trees as 
well as for children. The little evergreens — pine, 
spruce, hemlock, cedar — are so delicate when they 



ii7 

first come through the ground that they must be 
grown in a house made of lath screens to protect 
them from the hot sunshine. A hemlock tree does 
not grow an inch high the first season. The seeds 
are sown very thick and when the 'tiny trees are two 
or three years old they are taken up and set about 
two inches apart in rows six or eight inches apart. 




A hillside orchard. 



Here they spend two more years in the screen 
house, and then they are transplanted to the nursery 
rows. Usually the more delicate evergreens will 
have been moved four or five times before they are 
ready for sale. 

In the Southern States the market gardener sows 
his early cabbage seed very thick in seed beds in 



n8 

September, and in early November he transplants 
them a few inches apart in cold frames, where they 
are kept until late February or March, when they 
are set in the garden. If we want very early toma- 
toes we sow the seed in shallow boxes in January, 
then set each seedling in a small pot. As soon as 
roots show 7 against the side of the pot, we set the 
plant in a larger one, and possibly transplant it a 
third time before the weather is settled enough to 
set it in the open ground. I have known tomatoes 
grown in four-inch pots to have small fruit on them 
when put in the garden, early in May. 

Fruit trees are grown very close together in rows 
the first year or two. The nurseryman may grow 
250,000 trees on an acre, where the orchardist could 
not grow 250, because when large they would be 
too close together. 

The florist transplants his potted plants to get 
the greatest growth of root in the smallest space, as 
his room is always limited ; and besides, plants bloom 
more freely when their root growth is restricted. 

The evergreen grower transplants his little trees 
frequently in order to get as many fine roots as pos- 
sible near the base of the stem, so that when the 
tree is sold it will lose few roots in the last digging. 

The market gardener transplants his cabbage and 
tomatoes to prolong his season, growing them in 



ii9 

the winter under glass and getting well-rooted plants 
for setting in the field. 

The nurseryman transplants his fruit trees because 
he can grow many in a small space, and with little 
labor, while young; and when they get larger the 
trees must have a great deal of room. 

Transplanting is always a great advantage to the 
plant when carefully done, for every time a young 
root is cut several branches will form, in the same 
way as pruning the limb of a tree causes it to branch 
more freely. By this means the root-surface is in- 
creased, and the plant can thereby secure more food 
from the soil. 



120 



XXIV. ROB'S GARDEN 

I wonder how many boys who read this story 
dislike the garden as much as Rob did ! And I 
wonder whether boys and girls who have gardens of 
their own learn at last to love them as Rob loved his. 




Spading with narrow forkfuls. 

Rob was a town boy who lived with his grand- 
mother. There was a small yard with a little grass 
plot in front and a garden behind the house. Noth- 
ing in all Rob's experience was so annoying as the 
little garden in the back yard. Whenever he wanted 
to play marbles in the spring the garden had to be 



dug. When all the boys were going swimming in 
summer the garden had to be weeded. And Rob 
was fast growing to dislike, not only the garden, but 
all kinds of plants. 

One spring Rob's uncle came home for a visit 
just as the frost was gone from the garden. He 




Fining the soil with a rake. 

liked to dig and he had many things to tell Rob about 
the soil and manures and different kinds of seeds. 
They worked in the garden together, and for the first 
time in his life Rob found himself almost enjoying 
the garden work. Uncle Bert spread a thick coat of 
manure on the land and turned the soil with deep, 



22 



narrow forkfuls, so that when he had finished dig- 
ging there was no need of hoeing at all, and he 
made raking so easy that to smooth the surface was 
almost like play. They saved all the " fish worms " 
as they dug, for Uncle Bert had a habit of always 
finding time for a little fun after the work was over. 




Smoothing the soil with a rake. 

Do you remember what the earthworms do for the 
soil ? 

It was a little garden, so small that a horse and 
cultivator could hardly have turned around in it; so 
all the work was done by hand. Rob often said 
before he learned to like the garden that if he could 



123 

plow the land, as they did at Uncle Walter's on 
the farm, it would be all right. But I doubt if farm 
boys like to plow much better than Rob liked to dig 
with a spading fork. 

Uncle Bert showed Rob how much easier and 
better a spading fork worked when narrow instead 
of wide forkfuls were taken ; and he showed him how 
to break and fine the soil by digging the rake teeth 
into it, and how to smooth the surface by holding 
the rake handle almost straight up and passing the 
back of the teeth lightly over it. Then they made 
straight rows with the back of the rake, and they 
planted such things as lettuce, radish, spinach, carrot, 
parsnip, and salsify, iu rows fifteen inches apart, cov- 
ering the seed from one half to one inch deep and 
pressing the soil over the seed by tapping it with the 
back of the rake. They set early cabbage plants 
fifteen inches apart in rows two feet apart. That 
w r as gardening enough for one day. Later on beans 
and tomatoes, sweet corn and cucumbers, found a 
place in the little garden. You see. there were 
only four people in the family, and while the gar- 
den was only 36 by 44 feet in size, it produced 
plenty of these vegetables for the family. 

Now, Uncle Bert had a way of looking at things 
that was new to Rob, and it helped make the garden 
pleasanter. When Rob learned that the right way 



124 



to kill weeds with a hoe is to scalp them, he looked 
on every weed as a wild Indian, and went on the 
war path after them. He stopped cutting deep into 
the soil as though he were trying to dig it all up 

again, but he filed his 
hoe sharp and then 
cut the weeds off just 
a little below the sur- 
face, stirring them 
about so that they 
would dry quickly. 

Uncle Bert also 
showed Rob how 
hoeing, when done in 
the right way, was as 
helpful in saving 
moisture in the gar- 
den as harrowing was in the field. While they 
worked, Rob learned that the weeds were robbers, 
and that a dry crust among the plants in the 
garden is a robber also, since it lets the moisture 
out of the soil into the air. One set of robbers 
they killed by scalping, and the others they destroyed 
entirely with their hoes. 

Then they went swimming. 

Somehow, as the season advanced, it was noticed 
that Rob stopped scolding, and began to talk of " my 




125 

peas " and " my tomatoes." He was taking a pride 
in his garden. Perhaps the peas and tomatoes had 
been suggesting things to the boy while they all 
worked together in the garden. Of course the 
plants could not dig, nor rake, nor hoe; but they had 
their own work to do, and they were able to do it 
well because the boy had learned how to help them. 
I wish every boy in this school would try to see 
how many pleasant ways of doing pleasant things 
can be found in a garden ; and perhaps there is a 
" swimming hole " near enough to wash away the 
memory of all the unpleasant parts. 



26 



XXV. THE ORCHARD 



There may be some people who do not like the 
garden, but everybody likes the orchard. Of course 
there are different kinds of orchards, but the kind I 
mean is a place where fruit grows ; that is the only 
kind people like. I know of orchards where sassa- 
fras grows among starving apple trees that are full 
of dead limbs, and bear a great many lichens, and 
insect pests, and fungi — everything, one might 
almost say, but fruit ! I can't understand why the 
owners do not cut the old trees up for firewood, 
and plant the land to crops they like well enough 
to take care of. Can you ? 

Before the farmer plants an orchard, he ought to 
say to himself : " I want to grow fruit on this land, 
just as I want to grow corn and wheat in the fields. 
I know I can not get a crop of corn or wheat with- 
out doing the work those crops need ; so I will do 
my best also for my orchard, and give it just the 
care it requires." 

It only takes one year to grow a crop of wheat, 
and the following year some other crop is put in 
that field. But the orchard must grow several years 
before it begins to bear, and then, year after year, 
it ought to yield better and larger crops. If it is 
not worth caring for, it is not worth having. Give 



127 

it just as much care as any other field every year 
and it will be very apt to give you a good profit. 
Neglect it and it will pay no better than any other 
neglected field. That is what I want you to re- 
member while you are planting an orchard. 

Choose a hilltop or hillside — a north or west 




A fruiting quince tree. 

slope is best for almost all kinds of fruit trees. Buy 
strong one-year-old peach and apple, and two-year- 
old cherry, plum, pear, and quince. Set apple trees 
twenty-eight feet apart and all others sixteen feet 
apart. An orchard looks best and is most easily 
cared for when the rows are perfectly straight, but if 



128 



it is to be planted on a steep slope it is best to set 
the trees in straight rows up and down the hill, with 
each row on the same level around the hill. This 
will give an irregular stand, but it will enable the 
owner to plow around the hills instead of over them, 

and in a measure pre- 
vent washing. 

Make large holes, 
cut away all bruised 
roots with a sharp 
knife, give them their 
natural spread and fill 
in fine soil carefully 
and firmly around 
them. The trees 
should stand about 
an inch deeper than 
they stood in the 
nursery. Every win- 
ter the fruit trees 
should be pruned, and all through the growing 
season they should be cultivated and protected from 
insects, and disease. 

Pruning is cutting out branches in order that 
those remaining may have more room, more food, 
and more light, and thus grow better. Wild trees 
prune themselves. If you will take a walk in the 




A cherry tree in full bloom. 



129 



woods where the trees grow very thick, you may be 
able to see how they get rid of useless branches. 

Fruit trees, however, are planted so far apart that 
they do not prune themselves readily; and besides, 
they can not do the work themselves as well as we can. 

Early in the spring, 
the orchard should be 
plowed at least six- 
inches deep, and then 
the disk harrow or the 
spike-tooth harrow 
should keep the 
weeds down until 
May, when cowpeas 
can be sown. In 
August, as soon as 
the pea hay is made, 
the orchard is disked, 
and at once sown to 
rye, which tillers well 
before freezing 

,, , , A well-pruned young apple tree. 

weather, and makes 

the best kind of soil cover for the winter. Rabbits 
are apt to gnaw the bark of fruit trees, but they like 
rye better than bark, and seldom harm trees where 
rye is growing. 

While the trees are young, small-growing corn, 







fllil 


Hi 




i 


f • 



130 

potatoes, strawberries, navy beans, and other crops 
that require hoeing, but do not rob the trees of too 
much food, may be grown in the orchard, but after 
they begin to bear, the trees should have all the 
soil. No soil is rich enough to produce many crops 
of fruit without manure, anymore than a field could 
yield large crops of grain year after year without 
fertilizers. 

Many kinds of insects feed on the leaves and bark 
and fruit of orchard trees, and there are plant dis- 
eases, such as mildew, apple scab, and peach rot, 
that infest them. All these must be guarded 
against, and with plowing and cultivating and prun- 
ing and spraying, the owner of an orchard is as 
busy as the owner of a wheat farm or a stock farm ; 
and yet there are a great many farmers who think 
that fruit trees grow like forest trees, and require no 
care. If we wished to grow peach wood and apple 
wood, we might treat the trees as we would ash or 
maple, but we want to grow fruit, with just enough 
wood for the fruit to hang on. 



I3i 

XXVI. THE GRATEFUL PLANTS 

A good many years ago there was a little boy 
who looked just like me. He never lived in the 
country, but from the time he was big enough to 
pick strawberries (and you know a very little boy 
can do that) he worked during the long summer 
vacation in a market garden. 

There was a wise old English gardener who 
looked after the boys, and worked with them. He 
not only showed them how to do their work, but also 
tried to give them reasons for his methods. And 
always he would finish his little talks with the same 
speech : " Boys, you will never make good gardeners 
until you learn to love plants." 

And now, at the close of this little book, I feel 
like saying to all the boys and girls who have been 
working with me, " The one thing above all others 
that I hope you have learned is to love the plants." 
If you love them well enough, you will study them 
until you learn their ways, so that you may do 
everything necessary to make them as perfect as 
they can be grown. You will study the soil in 
which they grow, and learn how to make it more 
fertile, so that it will produce better crops. You will 
find what kind of grasses will grow best on your 
farm, and what variety of corn will give the largest 



132 

yield. You will see how your neighbor treats his 
land, and try to make your own as good or better. 
You will study the weeds and learn lessons in the 
forest and by the roadside. And once in a while, 
perhaps, some plant will tell you a secret of its own 
that nobody else knows. 

Sometimes when I am hoeing in the garden, I 
have a little make-believe conversation with the 
vegetables. One must be very intimate with the 
plants before such talks are possible. 

One day a tomato plant became very confiding, 
and it said to me, " I often wonder, when I remem- 
ber what my great-great-great-grandmother was like, 
whether men think as much of us tomatoes as we 
think of men ! Every one of us is deeply grateful to 
man for helping us. to improve so rapidly, and to be 
of so much more importance among the garden plants 
than our forefathers. I am not ashamed of my fam- 
ily, but when I think how long man loved my cousin, 
the potato, before he even knew us, it really makes 
me feel hurt. Of course, now everybody loves us, 
but, can you believe it ? there were years and years 
when people actually thought we were poisonous, 
and they only allowed us a place in the garden as 
curiosities. They called us 'love-apples' — your 
own grandmother will tell you so — but they did 
not love us." And the tomato sighed at the humble 



133 



place its forefathers had held in the opinion of man- 
kind. Then it continued its story : " I must admit 
that our family has changed greatly since the days 
when we were called love-apples. Why, I don't be- 
lieve I look any more like a love-apple than you 
resemble a wild Indian!" 

" How did you change your appearance so much ? " 
I asked. " When 
I was a little boy, 
all the tomatoes 
were either pear- 
shaped and small, 
or very much 
ribbed, and you 
are as smooth 
and beautiful as 
can be." 

" Thank you," 
said the tomato, 
" it is so nice to 
hear pleasant things. I will tell you. One day a 
man discovered that we were not poisonous at all, 
but were really very good to eat ; so he moved us out 
of the flower border, where we had always been kept, 
and where we were crowded, and put us in the big 
garden, where we could spread out our roots and 
find plenty of food. 




A ribbed tomato. 



134 

" Now you know when any one does you a kind- 
ness you try to return it in some way, and all the 
plants have the same feeling. Having plenty to eat, 
we stored up more food, and made better fruit. 
And our good friend, who became very much in- 
terested in watching us, chose the very largest and 
best fruits he could find among us, and saved the 
seeds from them. And when these seeds were 
planted and grew to fruiting size, every plant among 
them did its very best to make its fruit more per- 
fect. And so it was only a few generations till, by 
the help of the good man who selected the seeds of 
the very best fruits each year, we managed to hide 
all our ribs with flesh. Now everybody likes us ; 
and really, when I think of those dear old ribby 
ancestors of mine, I feel very sorry that men did not 
learn to love them sooner. 

" But I will tell you a secret," continued the 
tomato plant. " Every kind of plant in the world, 
and each plant of every kind, must do its very best 
for itself or it is apt to die out entirely. My ! my ! 
when I remember how much man has helped us 
tomatoes, I pity the poor forest trees, even though 
they are ever so much larger than we. We are not 
crowded, and whenever one of those upstart weeds 
tries to grow among us the gardener cuts his head 
off ; but nobody helps the forest trees. Of course 



135 

the old trees must sow millions of seeds, because 
somehow man does not love them as he does us, 
and so does not protect and help them, and though 
millions sprout in the spring they are no sooner born 
than they begin to fight one another. You see how 




Well-rounded tomato. 



it is : there is not room nor food enough for all of 
them, so very soon they struggle with one another 
for room and food. Always the strongest win and 
the weakest die. It must be pitiful to see the dying 
saplings in a pine thicket," said the tomato. " The 
strong pines take so much room that they soon 



136 

overtop the weaker ones, and you know plants can 
not live without light. So from the first year, as 
long as the forest lives, the trees must strive against 
each other and only the best reach a grand old age. 
"All plants, both wild and cultivated, have had 
much the same history as our family, only among 
the wild plants the changes have been very much 
slower than among such plants as man has helped. 
We love mankind. How can we help it when men 
have done so much for us ? I wish," said the tomato, 
wistfully — " oh ! how I wish that all men would 
love us too ; for then we would be even more perfect 
and beautiful and useful than we are now." 



37 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

In presuming to add to the curriculum a subject new to the 
schools and to the teachers, I am hopeful that the teacher may 
find in it. a diversion, and a help in maintaining a live interest on 
the part of many boys and girls who might otherwise be apa- 
thetic toward all school work. 

At first thought it seems absurd to speak of agriculture as a 
new subject in rural schools, surrounded as they are by fields 
and patronized exclusively by farmers. But as teachers we all 
have found to our sorrow that English is a new subject to the 
pupil, though no one can recall the time when he was not familiar 
with it. And so it is with agriculture, although every pupil in 
the rural schools may know something about farming. I hope my 
suggestions will lead the teacher to find purely local illustrative 
material, for the more concrete we make the first lessons on any 
subject, the greater our chance of success. 

My notion of writing these stories (I would call all of them 
stories, though in only a few is the story form attempted) is that 
pupils of the fourth to sixth grades might use one or two of them 
a week instead of a reading lesson, and that for every story 
some original work would be required of each pupil. Some 
stories will be best illustrated by asking for reports of farm 
operations at home, others by the making of simple experiments 
at school, and still others by excursions of the class to the woods 
or to the fields. 

In any event, let the teacher remember that these are to be 
simple lessons, and that they do not attempt to cover the vast 
field of agriculture. Call them nature studies if you like the name 
better. Make a school garden and illustrate the stories there if you 
happen to be enough interested in the idea to make it a practical 
success. It is true the average country school yard is about the 
last place an intelligent farmer would think of choosing for field 
or garden operations, and the average school teacher neither 



138 

plows nor sows nor reaps, while on all sides are examples to 
serve his every need ; but a successful school garden is an 
invaluable aid in all kinds of nature work, and wherever condi- 
tions are at all favorable the teacher should attempt one. 

It would seem that any form of instruction that begins within 
the present knowledge of the pupil and carries him step by step 
into the unknown would profit him. And if the reasons of 
things can be discovered, rather than taught, the discoverer is an 
interested voyager in that particular sea. 

I have tried in each story to throw a little light on the great 
subject of economic plant production, and the series as a whole 
should give the pupil a simple notion of the why and the how 
of field work. 

You will need some material that may not be available in your 
district. Let your state university or agricultural college help 
you. These institutions can do no better work than the particu- 
lar form of " university extension " that will bring them into 
close touch with the common schools. They can send you grape 
cuttings and flower slips and give an occasional help over the 
hard places, if you will look ahead and discover your need in 
time. If you have a school garden, or want one, they will send 
you a canna or a dahlia or some other plant to put in it, for every 
university or agricultural college would like to have a small share 
in every rural school. 

But we all know that only a little of the world's interest is in 
books ; and still less of childhood's interest centers there. Na- 
ture allures the children and teaches them many things. We who 
are interested in the rural schools can do no better work for our 
commonwealth than to aid in making farm life and the things 
pertaining to it more attractive to the farm boy or girl. There 
is a certain amount of drudgery inseparable from farm life, but 
there is vastly more of interest than many tillers of the soil have 
discovered. Let us begin with the children and try to give them 
an idea of their relation to the plant world. It will make work 
more interesting, and life larger and better. 



139 

SUGGESTIONS 

I. Introduction. — Take the children to a nursery if there is 
one in the neighborhood, and show them the little fruit trees. 
As you go to and from school, be on the lookout for plants that 
increase by runners, underground stems, etc. In all of them, 
as the new plants become established the old ones die, and thus 
the plant slowly moves from place to place. Set a strawberry 
plant in the school garden, in rich soil. Hoe it and water it well. 
Layer each runner so as to give the greatest amount of room, and 
as the new runners appear layer them so that they will root quickly. 
By fall the single plant should have spread over a circle of more 
than ten feet. As many as 1260 plants have been grown from 
one in a single season. 

II. Soil. — Give each child a piece of soft stone, like shale or 
sandstone, and some very dry decayed forest leaves. Let him 
pound these leaves and the stone into dust, mix them with 
water in a fruit jar (one tenth dust, nine tenths water), shake 
violently, and let the mixture stand over night. In the morn- 
ing let him drain off the water carefully and set the jar on the 
back of the kitchen stove until the contents can be handled. 
Compare with soil from a garden and from a stony field. Dig 
in moist earth for angleworms, using sharp spade (watch for 
the holes the worms make in the soil) ; break up spadefuls with 
the hands to see where the holes go. Let the school visit a 
river or a creek and see how sand bars and washed banks are 
made. Let the school visit an old field or a hillside and see 
gullying. 

III. Kinds of Soil. — Have each pupil dig a hole in the 
garden at home, -deep enough to show the change in color 
between the top soil and that below (subsoil). The pupil should 
spade one side of the hole vertical, and measure with a rule the 
depth of surface soil (to changed color). Have each pupil bring 
a small sample of soil from a field at home and let the class 
decide whether it is a clay, sand, or loam, or some modification 
of one of these. 



140 

Have a pile of clay and another of sand in the yard, and 
mix gradually, noting the change. Instead of sand use pul- 
verized dry leaves. 

Wet samples of clay, sand, loam, and gravel, and determine 
the order of their drying. 

Plant wheat seed in fresh clay, sand, and loam, and see which 
sprouts quickest and best. Let the plants dry up, and see 
which lives longest without water. 

The teacher will often find no pure clay, nor clean sand, in his 
vicinity ; the clays differ in color and texture, but are alike in 
their relation to water, which makes them stiff and plastic. 

Sand may be washed and baked in an oven. If clay is treated 
in the same way, a good lesson is found for the children. Re- 
member that so far as agriculture is concerned, the whole inter- 
est in soil rests in its relation to the plant ; and as the soil food 
of the plant is only absorbed in water, the child should be made 
to see that any soil, by whatever name, or of whatever color or 
texture, that will allow water to drain from it, and still retain 
enough to make plants grow, is a safe soil to use for farming. 
A mixture of pure sand and clay in the right proportions for this 
result is called loam. Almost everywhere the top soil is loam, 
even though the subsoil is clay or sand. The top soil always 
contains more or less decayed vegetable matter (humus), which 
both enriches it and improves its water-holding power. 

IV. The Plant and the Soil. — Secure several blotters from an 
insurance office, or buy blotting paper in a large piece and fold 
it to a convenient size. On a Monday morning dip the blotters in 
water, then sow wheat and radish seed between them. Put them 
in a closed box or drawer to prevent drying, and thereafter keep 
them damp but not wet. Remove the cover (upper) blotter every 
day and watch the seeds grow. By the end of the week, if the 
schoolroom is kept warm, both wheat and radish will have 
rooted enough to show root hairs. The root tips increase in 
length, and if they had hairs on them, the hairs would all be 
rubbed off as the root tip pushed into the soil. Only the tips of 



141 

the root lengthen. Carefully dig up young plants of any kind, 
wash the soil off very gently, and make a study of root hairs. 
Potted geraniums are very good for this exercise, when the 
roots have reached the sides of the pot. There are no hairs 
on old roots, because they have done their work in that part of 
the soil, and as the root pushes into fresh soil the hairs develop 
there. 

Tree roots are almost all — even in the largest trees — within 
four feet of the surface, because there is much more plant food 
in the surface layers of soil than in the lower or subsoil. Surface 
soil is colored by decayed leaves, twigs, etc., and such vegetable 
matter is washed into the soil by rain. The upper layers of soil 
act as a filter, and by the time the water has passed through 
three or four feet of soil it will have become colorless. 

Make all the observations suggested in the story. 

V. Little Rivers under the Ground. — Find a cut in a wood 
road like that described, and watch what happens after a rain. 

Underground waterways of this kind are better than surface 
gullies, because they do not wash the rich surface soil away, and 
they prevent gullying. After a sharp shower take the class out to 
a gully and see how much washing is going on. This is an espe- 
cially important subject for the South, because our soils wash 
away very badly, and every effort to prevent this waste should 
be encouraged. 

VI. What the Forest does for the Soil. — Have an excursion 
to a thick woodland, if possible adjacent to orchards, grainfields, 
and meadows. Study the surface of the soil in all. Why do the 
leaves not make a mulch (soil cover) in the orchard as they do 
in the forest ? Why does not the meadow grass decay and make 
humus like the forest litter ? Because much of the grass is cut 
for hay, and what is left decays very slowly, since the sun 
keeps it dry. Grass really does make humus in time. The 
prairie soils of the West are very rich in humus, made entirely 
from decayed grass, leaves, stems, and roots. In the forest see 
whether all kinds of leaves decay with equal rapidity. Compare 



142 

especially needle-shaped leaves (pine) with broad leaves (maple, 
oak, etc.). 

Why do ladies get leaf-mold for their house plants ? Study 
particularly some abandoned field, such as is described in the 
story. Have the pupils bring reports from home of the length 
of time the different farm fields have been in cultivation, and of 
the results of parents' observations of effect of forest growth in 
reclaiming land. 

VII. The Robber Farmer. — The object of this story is to show 
the importance of fertilizing the soil. The teacher should not 
attempt to explain the composition of fertilizers and manures, 
but the pupil should be impressed with the fact that every plant 
that is removed from the farm takes away a small but definite 
amount of plant food, and if this is not replaced the fields will 
gradually become sterile. In fact, good farming demands that 
each year more plant food (fertilizers) be added to the soil than 
is removed in the crop, thus gradually improving instead of re- 
ducing the soil fertility. 

Let each pupil bring the history of one field in the home farm 
as far back as he can learn it — just what crops were produced 
in it, and just how much manure or fertilizer was applied ; 
whether it has been under cultivation ever since it was cleared 
of forest, or whether it has been in grass, and how often and how 
long each time. Such records will show whether there is any 
" robbery " going on in your neighborhood. 

VIII. Weeds. — Work with weeds can go on from this lesson 
to the end of the year. Have each pupil make a collection of 
weeds. Get a specimen in flower and press it in an old book, or 
make a press of newspapers with a piece of board weighted by a 
stone. If you cannot name them, your State Experiment Station 
will doubtless be glad to help you, though every rural teacher 
should have a Gray's " Manual of Botany," and learn to classify 
his own specimens. Each specimen in the pupil's collection 
should be labeled with its common name, and a brief description 
of its bad habits, with the means of destroying it. If collections 



143 

of the ripe fruit and seed can be secured, all the better. Make a 
weed collection for the school. In this connection teach the 
class that all the time there is a great struggle going on among 
the plants for food and for room to grow in. Not one in ten 
thousand of the seeds that sprout every spring lives to produce 
seed, and so man must protect the plants that are useful to him 
by destroying the others, which he calls weeds. 

Have each pupil find all the different weeds he can in his 
father's hayfield, and in the cornfield. In which is there the 
greater number, and why ? What weeds live in the ground over 
winter ? What weeds spread by seed only ? What weeds spread by 
stems ? What weeds produce most seed ? What weed seeds have 
wings, or hair, or silk, or any other means of being spread by the 
wind ? Bring specimens to school (always by preference the entire 
plant). What weeds spread by fastening themselves to animals 
or to people's clothing? You see there are many things to work 
up about the weeds. Tillage is stirring the soil. Dust mulch is 
a soil covering of dust, instead of leaves, straw, etc., commonly 
used for mulching. 

IX. What the Russian Thistle Did. — The Russian thistle 
(Salsola kali) is a tumble weed — one of a class which breaks off 
at the ground when its seed is ripe, and is blown before the wind 
for a great distance, dropping its seed as it goes. This form is 
less common in the east than in the plains, and is given as 
showing one of the many interesting ways the plants have of 
spreading their seed abroad. A valuable exercise is the study 
of seed distribution by different kinds of plants. 

X. The Plant's Business. — Have the class tell the special 
usefulness to man of many plants not named in the lesson, and 
just what part of each is used. 

Flax. — Woody part of stem for linen. Seed for " linseed " 
oil and oil cake. 

Com. — Pith to make cellulose, with which the sides of battle- 
ships are stuffed, so that when a ball pierces the outer wall the 
cellulose swells quickly and fills the hole. 



144 

Hemp. — Woody part of stem for ropes. 

Hops. — Fruit for bread or beer making. 

Tobacco. — Leaves for smoking, etc. 

Peanuts. — Fruit for food. 

Artichoke. — Root for stock food. 

Globe artichoke. ■ — Buds, vegetable, for food. 

Asparagus. — Young shoots, vegetable, for food. 

Rhubarb. — Leaf stalk, vegetable, for food. 

Cauliflower. — Flower bud, vegetable, for food. 

Use especially all farm and garden plants known in your 
neighborhood. 

XI. Buds and Seeds. — Have a boy dig up a number of black- 
berry and red raspberry roots and have the class find buds on 
them (not roots really, but underground stems). 

Find buds on Bermuda, Johnson, or other grass and 
on corn. Tear away the sheath of the leaf which surrounds 
the stem of grasses and grains, and at its base, attached just 
above the joint, you will find a little bud. Compare this, as to 
position, with the tree buds. Compare the potato tuber (the 
potato itself) with the potato leaf stem. Find buds on both, and 
see if there is anything on the potato that compares with the 
leaf. 

The bright colors of flowers are undoubtedly there to attract 
insects. Dr. Mueller has written a large book, devoted entirely 
to lists of insects that visit the different flowers. Have pupils 
watch a flower on a bright morning and see how many kinds of 
insects get into it. 

Green-colored flowers are wind-fertilized — the Carolina pop- 
lar, walnut, oak, ash, and most other forest trees, are of this 
class. Many plants, like the red clover and orchids, could not 
bear seeds at all if the insects did not help them. 

Soak beans in water twenty-four to forty-eight hours, then slip 
off the skin, separate the seed-leaves, and see the bud between 
them. Compare with corn treated in the same way, and with 
buds on growing plants. 



145 

In the spring watch the growth of leaf buds on a tree and 
compare with the sprouting of seed — strikingly similar. 

XII. Why do we Plow? — Good plowing is seldom seen, and 
the pupils of grades four to six often have this work to do. 
One of the best things we could accomplish for agriculture 
would be the improvement of plowing. Why not have a plow- 
ing contest some day, and ask three of the best farmers in the 
neighborhood to serve as judges ? Let the prize be a blue ribbon, 
and let it be understood that to do work well is in itself the 
greatest prize. Have the pupils measure (with a rule) the depth 
of the plowing that is done at home. Have them report on sub- 
soiling. Tell the boys to take a spade and dig straight down in 
a grainfield, a cornfield, and a meadow, shaving one side of the 
hole until smooth, and see if they can tell from the appearance of 
the soil how deep it has been plowed. Good plowing means 
straight furrows, so narrow that all the land is turned, and the 
burying of all stubble, weeds, or other surface covering. The 
deeper the plowing, the greater the benefit to the soil, provided 
no more subsoil is turned up than will weather (crumble) in a 
single season. 

XIII. Give the Crops Plenty to Eat. — The elements which all 
plants require for growth are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitro- 
gen, potassium, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, 
chlorine, calcium, and silicon. Carbon is taken in through the 
pores of leaves. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, 
and this is absorbed from the soil by the roots. All the other 
elements named are dissolved in the soil water in the form of 
nitrates, sulphates, phosphates, etc. 

If you have a school garden, good work can be done by grow- 
ing the same crop in beds that have not been fertilized and beds 
fertilized with manure, cottonseed meal, acid phosphate, muriate 
of potash. Beds ten by ten feet will not require more than 
one pound of meal and of phosphate and a quarter of a pound of 
muriate of potash. Plant one bed to which the last three ferti- 
lizers have been added — two and one quarter pounds of mixed 



146 

fertilizer. If you can get nitrate of soda, plant one bed without 
the meal fertilizer, and after the plants are up sprinkle one 
eighth of a pound of fine nitrate next to the plants. In three or 
four weeks repeat the nitrate. 

If you have no school garden, get the nearest neighbor to the 
school to let your class do this work in his garden. Corn, small 
grain, or any garden vegetable will answer the purpose. 

Have the pupils report what fertilizers, and quantity per acre, 
are used on the different crops at home. 

Watch the effect of drought on different crops ; of too much 
wet weather. Ensilage is a crop that has been chopped fine and 
packed while green in an air-tight place, called a silo. Ensilage 
is an especially good food for dairy cattle. 

XIV. Sowing the Seed. — Let each pupil mark a bean plant at 
home, and save it until all the beans are ripe, or yellow ; then 
count the number of pods and the number of beans. The bean 
makes comparatively few seeds. A fifteen-year-old apple tree 
should bear fifteen bushels of apples. If there are one hundred 
and fifty apples in a bushel, and they average seven seeds each, 
how many seeds would a ten-acre orchard contain if the trees 
stood twenty-eight by twenty-eight feet? Tell the class the 
parable of the sower (Matt. xiii. 3-8). 

From a handful of wheat select a hundred of the largest, 
plumpest grains and plant in a row (at home or in the school 
garden). In a row beside the first plant a hundred of the small- 
est, shriveled grains. Any other seeds will do equally well — 
radish are especially good, because they mature quickly. 

Plant one lot (using the same number of seeds in all lots) 
without firming the soil above them. Firm the soil on the second 
lot. The result is most marked in dry weather. 

Plant one lot in rough, lumpy soil, another in well-fined soil 
(particularly useful, as many farmers neglect preparation of soil 
for seed). 

A blotting-paper garden is especially useful for showing effects 
of moisture. Submerge one blotter of seeds in water, keep a 



147 

second dry, a third wet, but with access to air, and a fourth 
damp but not wet. Comparisons are interesting. Have each 
pupil examine daily at the same hour and keep a written record 
of the number of seeds that sprout each day. 

A cover crop is anything that is grown to prevent soil washing, 
such as rye, crimson clover, etc. The cover crops are usually 
sown in early fall, and are plowed under in the spring, thus be- 
coming important means of soil improvement. 

XV. Round and Round the Farm. — Rotation of crops is a 
part of good farm management. If there is a farm in your 
neighborhood where it has been in practice for several years, 
make an excursion to it, and go over the fields with the farmer, 
getting him to explain his system to the children. If you have 
any old and young forest growths near your school, see if the 
new growth is like the old forest near it. The forest is very apt 
to " rotate." Find out what crops are most commonly grown 
in your neighborhood and get the help of your best farmer in 
arranging a rotation, making a diagram to suit the locality. All 
the fields need not be of the same size or shape. Have each 
pupil make a map of his home farm, and plan a rotation for it, 
based on the experience of the best farmer in the neighborhood. 

XVI. Stirring the Soil. — Make experiments in the school 
garden, or home garden, in mulching a little square (say, three 
hills square, nine hills) of corn one foot deep with grass, straw, 
weeds, or any other litter. Keep the surface of the ground on a 
similar square adjacent, hoed one to two inches deep, so that no 
crust is allowed to form on it. On a third square scalp the 
weeds, but do not hoe nor cultivate, keeping clean of weeds. 
Note the results from week to week. Measure the height in 
inches to the top of the stalk (including only the sheath of 
the youngest leaf — not to its point). Note the yield. 

If any of your neighbors use fine-shovel (spike-toothed or 
two-inch) and others use "bull-tongue " or double-shovel culti- 
vators, compare the work done, and show which is best, and 
why. 



i 4 8 

Study for yourself, in the practice of your neighbors, the 
methods of cultivation employed, keeping in mind the character 
of season (wet or dry) and of the soil. 

XVII. Hoed Crops. — If there is a market garden or " truck 
farm " in your neighborhood, make an excursion to it, and see 
how much more thoroughly crops are tilled than on the average 
farm, especially the hoed crops. Examine market gardeners' 
tools and implements and show how well adapted they are to the 
stirring of the soil. 

In the school or home garden try the experiment, in rows of 
beans side by side, of keeping one well hoed and another hoed 
very little. Early cabbage is a specially good crop for this exer- 
cise. Take ten plants for each treatment. Stir the soil well 
every week around the first ten and scalp the weeds only about 
the second. 

Try the effect of late cultivation (hoeing) on sweet corn. Keep 
hoeing one lot until it is ready for market ; stop a second as 
soon as the first tassel shows. 

XVIII. Cereals. — Impress the fact that planting small grain 
in weedy land is throwing away a part of the crop, because every 
weed takes food that ought to go to the grain, and there is no 
practical way of killing the weeds after the grain is sown. 

Get each pupil to report the exact way his father treats his 
grainfield. When is it plowed ? How deep ? How often is it 
harrowed before planting ? How much seed is sown per acre ? 
How much and what fertilizer is used ? What kind of a seeder 
is used ? Is it rolled after seeding and in spring ? At what stage 
is it cut ? How is it harvested (stacked, or threshed from field) ? 
You will be surprised how good a story your boys and girls can 
tell of the wheat or other small grain. " Tiller " means to branch 
at the surface of the ground. 

XIX. In the Meadow. — Meadows and pastures are fields in 
which grass is the crop raised. If the grass is cut for hay, the 
field in which it grows is called a meadow. If animals are 
grazed on the grass, the field is called a pasture. 



149 

As a rule the farmer cuts hay in the early summer, and when 
the grass plants have started to grow again he turns his cattle or 
sheep on the meadow for fall pasturage. 

We must remember that the hay crop is made up of single 
grass plants, the same as wheat, or corn, or cotton. There are 
a great many more grass plants growing on an acre than corn 
plants, and in the case of the grass each plant branches at the 
ground or sends out runners, which so intermingle that it is hard 
to pick out a single plant from its fellows. So we have come to 
think of grass as a sod, or meadow, or pasture. Let us not for- 
get, however, that every lawn and meadow and pasture is made 
up of separate grass plants, each of which after a time will send 
up flower stalks and will mature seed. 

Meadows and pastures are grown for hay and for grazing. In 
both cases the most useful part of the grass plant is the leaves. 
If the seed is allowed to ripen before the grass is cut, the hay 
will be much poorer in quality than if it were cut in the blossom. 
Cattle will not do so well in grass that has gone to seed, as in 
grass that is young. The reason is that almost all grass seed are 
very small and quite hard, and are not digested by the animal that 
eats them. We know that the seed contains stored food, which 
was made in the leaves. If the grass is cut just as the buds begin 
to bloom, most of this stored food will be contained in the stem 
and leaves, and thus the animals feeding on the hay will get it 
all. 

If the farmer wants to grow grass for hay, he should cut it as 
the first bloom appears. If he intends to thresh it, like wheat, 
and sell the seed, he should cut it when the seed is all ripe, but 
before it begins to fall. 

The grass is a very delicate plant when it first sprouts, and 
the wheat or oats protect it by growing more rapidly. It grows 
slowly in the shade of the grain, but when the crop is cut, the 
grass plants are strong enough to be helped by the full sunshine, 
and by fall the meadow land can be grazed lightly. Meadow 
land that is fertile and has a good water supply will yield good 



150 

hay crops for several years without reseeding. But each year it 
is apt to get a little weedier, and it is best to put the meadow 
land in regular rotation. Among the best meadow grasses are 
timothy, redtop, and orchard grass. Where it can be grown, 
red clover should always be mixed with the meadow grasses. 
Meadows should always be plowed under when they become 
weedy, and the best crop to plant in them, especially if clover 
has been mixed with the grasses, is corn or potatoes. 

Rough land can often be more profitably used for pastures 
than for cultivation. In mountain regions, if enough trees are 
left to provide a light shade, blue grass makes a good permanent 
pasture, especially if cottonseed meal forms a part of the cattle 
feed, the sod improving with age. Early in the spring the entire 
pasture should be harrowed to scatter the manure evenly over it. 
In the South a good permanent pasture can be made of Bermuda 
grass, which is one of the best soil binders, and is very useful 
for preventing the washing of hillside lands. It is hard to get rid 
of, and should be kept out of fields that are in regular rotation. 

Have the pupils learn when the meadow at home was sown, 
and bring to school as many different kinds of weeds as they can 
find in the meadow ; also as many different grasses as they can 
find. If you have any trouble in naming the grasses, send a 
sample of leaf and flower or seed stalk to your university or ex- 
periment station. 

Have each pupil write a description of the way hay is made on 
his home farm. 

XX. Two Cousins. — One of the most important lessons in 
plant culture is the fact that the plant is a machine for digesting, 
storing, and using food. In youth the plant is constantly digest- 
ing more food than it uses in growth, and this excess is stored up 
in the stem, the root, or the leaf until the flowering and fruiting 
comes. Plants bloom only when they have reached a certain ma- 
turity, and the rapid development of flower and seed is explained 
by the great amount of stored food within the plant. In the cases 
given, the bud (cabbage head) and root (turnip) are storehouses. 



i5i 

You know the peach blooms before there are any leaves on the 
trees. All the material in the flowers was stored in the twigs the 
year before. This explains also how all trees start to grow in 
the spring — on food stored up the summer before. How very 
necessary, then, to make the soil for crops rich, since well- 
fed plants produce the heaviest crops. 

Children can be greatly interested in this subject, and it is full 
of lessons. The sprouting of seed depends on the store of food 
within it. The starting of growth in the spring, fruitage — the 
whole operation of plant growth — seems to center here. 

Have the class report on different parts of plants used as 
storehouses — Irish potato, sweet potato, cowpea, wheat, corn, 
artichoke, gladiolus, mullein, burdock, timothy grass, etc. These 
reports should be made after discovering an enlargement of 
certain parts, as the tuber of the potato and the root of the mul- 
lein weed before its flower stalk forms. 

XXI. A Blanket Garden. — It is believed that the directions in 
the lesson for making a hotbed are explicit. If you have no way 
of getting money for sash (though almost any school can arrange 
an entertainment for the raising of necessary funds), try a similar 
framed garden at school after the principal danger of frost is 
past in spring. A board covering at night will be sufficient 
protection. It will succeed better than a big school garden at first 
because its small size will mean less work, and the entire class can 
claim a share in it. Watch the watering. Water only when dry, 
then give a soaking, and as soon as the surface is dry enough hoe 
it or break the crust. Lift the sash every day to admit air, but 
guard against frost on cold days. It will stimulate interest in 
the. patrons if you grow enough early tomato (variety Earliana) 
plants to give each pupil a dozen or two for his home 
garden. 

XXII. Cuttings. — By all means have a box of sand in the 
school window, if you cannot arrange a hotbed (blanket garden), 
and have the pupils bring slips of geranium, heliotrope, coleus, 
or any other plants. Take a box not more than four inches 



152 

deep. Place in it three inches of clean, sharp sand, and plant 
the cuttings as described in the lesson. Keep the sand damp 
and after ten days or two weeks pull up a cutting of each variety 
to see if roots are forming — resetting at once. As soon as a 
root shows one fourth inch long the cutting can be potted in a 
rich sandy loam. In the schoolroom the pots had best sit in 
shallow boxes of sand in a sunny window. 

Have all the pupils make hard-wood cuttings of grapes and 
such shrubs as spiraea, golden elder, crape myrtle, and the flow- 
ering shrubs generally. These are to be made in the late fall or 
winter, and will not begin to grow until the following spring. But 
they grow so well that they are large enough to set in their 
permanent places when one year old. Make blackberry and 
horseradish root cuttings. 

XXIII. Transplanting. — The value of transplanting is easily 
illustrated in the case of potted plants. When soft-wood cuttings 
are rooted, set them first in very small pots. In a month or six 
weeks the roots will show against the sides of the pots (you can 
turn the plant out of the pot by inverting the pot and giving it a 
sharp tap on the edge of the table). Then set the plant in a 
three-inch pot, packing a very little soil all around the ball of 
earth with a stick, until the plant is firm. In a few weeks it will 
need transplanting again. If you will leave a few geraniums in 
three-inch pots, and transplant others successively into four, five, 
and six inch pots, those in the three-inch pots will bloom soonest, 
but the others will grow best. 

If you have a school garden, try resetting shrubs or forest trees 
when one, two, and three years old, and compare the roots with 
those of trees that have not been reset. This exercise is espe- 
cially valuable with walnut, hickory, and the oaks grown from 
seed. 

XXIV. Rob's Garden. — In this story I have endeavored to 
suggest what sympathy means to boys when they have irksome 
tasks in hand. The story may be applied not only in the garden 
but with book lessons as well. 



153 

One of the best exercises in this course is in connection with 
this lesson : How large an amount of any garden or field crop 
can be grown on a small (measured) area of land ? Can a boy 
or a girl grow enough beets, beans, cabbage, corn, or any other 
vegetable on one square yard of garden land to feed a family 
one meal ? Try it with several vegetables — let us say lettuce, 
beets, cabbage, tomatoes, and snap beans. That would require 
a plat of land three by fifteen feet in size. Explain to the class 
how closely these plants can stand when mature : lettuce and 
beets three inches apart, in rows twelve inches apart — but the 
thinnings can be used, so drill close in the rows ; beans two 
to three inches apart, in rows fifteen to eighteen inches apart ; 
early cabbage eighteen inches apart, in rows eighteen inches 
apart ; tomatoes three feet apart. Remind the class that a tomato 
plant can be set in the center of the early cabbage, and of the 
lettuce, beets, and beans ; so they can have four tomato plants 
— or they can get two or more crops of lettuce. The problem 
of how much crops can be grown from a small area can be 
worked out in many ways, and is an interesting and practical 
one. From the crop on his five square yards let the pupil 
estimate how much might be grown on one acre. 

XXV. The Orchard. — There are many lessons for boys and 
girls in the way trees grow and bear fruit. Ask your class which 
bears the more nuts, a walnut tree in an open field or one 
closely surrounded by other trees. Why ? Which yields the 
more useful timber, and why ? The trees in the open develop 
a great crown, and of course nuts only grow out on the young 
branches, so the more branches a tree can have, if they get light 
enough, the more nuts it can produce. On the other hand, the 
trunk of a tree is best for timber, because it has few knots and 
is of large size. When trees grow close, their trunks are long, 
the lower limbs being shaded out. 

In their rivalry for light there is the same competition among 
the branches of an orchard tree, or any other tree planted in 
the open, that exists among the close-growing trees of a forest. 



154 

Prune out the weakest, or those tending crosswise of other limbs, 
and you admit light enough for the full development of the 
remainder. 

Study frost localities. The cold air settles in the low places. 
Often there is a frost at the bottom of the hill and none at the 
top. This is especially important in choosing a location for 
peaches. Children can observe frost phenomena as well as 
adults. When the center of a fruit bud has turned black or 
brown, it has been killed by frost. Often the peach crop will 
have been killed even though there is heavy bloom, because 
the petals of the flowers are hardier than the ovaries. 

Above all, impress the idea that fruit is a crop, the same as 
corn, and an orchard requires tillage the same as a cornfield. 
That is why crops are planted between the trees — to insure 
their cultivation, and to get some return from the land while the 
orchard is too young to bear. 

XXVI. The Grateful Plants. — It is the purpose of this story to 
suggest how farmers may improve their crops by careful selec- 
tion. In this work not only the seed, but the plant on which it 
grows, should be observed, and only the best plants should be 
saved for seed. 

If earliness is the most important quality (as in raddish, lettuce, 
etc.), the first plants to mature should be saved for seed, and only 
their plumpest seed should be used. Selection can be made for 
size, flavor, color, or any other quality. 

Variability is a law of nature, and hardly any two plants are 
exactly alike. 

Have pupils select the largest ten heads of wheat they can 
find in a field, the earliest cabbage in their home garden, or the 
largest flower on their favorite plant, and save the seed for next 
year's planting. Many practical exercises are possible. 



NATURE STU DY 

$0.40 

By FRANK OVERTON, A.M., M.D., assisted by 
MARY E. HILL, Instructor in Science and Nature 
Study in the Goodyear Burlingame School, Syracuse, N.Y. 



THIS book is designed to furnish a year's work in nature 
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